Moonstruck
by Selah Ex Animo
Summary: Who shall rescue the hero when the hero falls? Zelda x Ganondorf; implied Malon x Link.
1. Prologue: The Lady in the Tower

**Author's Note:** Welcome, one and all, to my newest Zelda fanfiction: **Moonstruck**.

_Moonstruck_ has been in the works for several years now, coming to me in bits and pieces of failed fanfiction, published literature, Celtic mythology and folklore, and Enya's music. Only this year have I finally stirred my faculties and begun to make sense out of this filed melange of plot ideas, characters, settings, observations, and prose. So far, I'm delighted with the result.

_Moonstruck_ begins with Zelda, though Zelda is not my main concern. This novelette will follow Malon for most of the time, though complexities of plot will require that not only Malon, but Zelda, Ganondorf, Link, and even the fairies of Hyrule make an appearance, and contribute to its culmination to form the story's completion. _Moonstruck _is one of my more complex stories, in that I got a headache trying to figure out all the sideplots, in an attempt to render _The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time _to its fullest, **AU** potential! _Moonstruck_ also retells _The Ballad of Tam Lin_, which, if you are assiduous in your search, you can find somewhere on the Internet.

Part 1 is a tangle of introductions with allusions to the heart of the story; please bear with me. And with that, I now give you:

**Moonstruck**

_By Selah Ex Animo_

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_  
_I sit here, in the prime of my life, and at the point of my existence most extolled by the poets, in a tower… upon a ledge with my shoulder pressed to soiled panes… My hands are wrapped in bandages and desiccated blood is upon my fingertips. I sew, weaving coarse threads through bits of baldachin I have taken from my ruined dresses, and endeavour to create novelty. It is a novelty that shall remain… black before my eyes, and shall be falsely exclaimed over by empathetic ladies, before they cast it, beneath my nose, into the flames._

_But it is all I can do._

* * *

**Proem**

Stooped in the sullen darkness, where the very stone was rendered black, the shrine of Beauty crumbled, a tomb caged in the weary body of a young woman.

She had once been comely. Majesty lingered in the sweep of her brow, in the paling curls upon her shoulders, in the upward tilt of her chin. Her draggled clothes were of days long passed, but even here vestiges of majesty clung, in the Attic cut, the faded thread, the trace of orchid in her sash. Hers was the ageless beauty after which the poets hungered. And yet, despite her beauty, the girl was bent, ravished, and ruined. A tomb, to which Beauty was sentenced.

The girl shivered, ducking over her bloody fingers, the fragment of canvas, and the needle she held. The needle was dull and crimson-tipped, a testament to her lack of skill. She had destroyed her hands, in a mad attempt to be useful here in the dark tower whose shadow straddled the walls of Market Town. For many days she had gouged them, purposely driving the needle beneath her nails when spasms of wrath came upon her. The patience for which her child-self had been famous was now expunged, driven to madness, ravaged, hampered, destroyed. She could no longer wait for her skill to develop, could no longer lean against the stained glass panes, tracing the mullions with her blighted fingers and dreaming of lighter days. Could she have wept for innocence and innocent habit lost, the tears would have fallen. But they too had been expunged.

Driven out, alongside her vision.

She sometimes dwelt upon the lighter days, as she sat sewing. In the musty quiet, days when the breath of spring was upon the land came again to her, and she felt again the horse that she had often rode, in the company of noble men and maidens. How beautiful the world had been, breathless with colour, drunk upon daylight's dewy kisses! She remembered the dawn haze, and how it had washed the lake, boiling from the surface of the water to swallow the bars and beads of sunlight, the trills of finch and martin, the voices of nobles, thrumming the lakeshore. She and her entourage had often visited the lake, watching the mist clear and heaven unveil herself amid the remnants of filmy dew. And along the shore, where the gray Field crumbled into patches of brush and sand, Pleasure raised her lilac tent, in the form of picnics and excursions, cotillions danced al fresco, hours upon the lake.

How sweet life had been, careless and festive, without the weight of care! Mortals were not cursed by prophetic dreams, or driven from their castles, hunted by madmen, stabbed in their beds. Life was levity, the hours woven with laughter. And in one moment, as seemingly felicitous as the next, it had all been destroyed. Pleasure weighted with care, levity driven to exile, laughter stabbed in its bed.

How quickly did the goddesses take what they had amply bestowed!

The girl twisted the needle in her hands and gave a sharp jerk. The needle parted company with the thread and the girl, laying it carefully it in her lap, proceeded to knot the thread. The thread was full of knots, both of her own devising and of the device of misfortune, and the thread was becoming difficult to work with.

Her fingers were graceless, and the process of knotting arduous. She at last straightened, and ran her fingers down the short length of thread. The loops were too wide, and had come untied. She gritted her teeth, raised the thread to her sightless eyes, and pulled violently at the ends.

There was the muffled rip. The girl gasped, her hand flying to the cloth. The fabric was torn, the seams pulled asunder. A shriek escaped her before she could stop it; standing, the girl threw the fabric aside, and felt it brush her skirt as it fell to the ground.

The solitary ping of a needle upon the flagstones caught her attention. With a cry, and wild gesture, she felt her lap. The needle was gone. She fell to her knees, throwing the fabric away from her, landing with a shock that seemed able to shatter her fragile build. She ran her hands over the floor, patting the stone, uttering little cries. It was gone, no doubt having sprung away upon colliding with the ground, and vanishing into some black recess. Or perhaps it lay right before her nose. No matter if it did.

She rose, sobbing and tearless, and drove her fists into the window behind her. Her lady-in-waiting had not yet opened the shutters, and her fists thumped against the fragmented wood, blossoming into a shower of stings as her hands were pricked. Her mind registered the brief pain. Wildly, she flung her fists against the shutters. The rotten wood sagged beneath her blows. Lunatic buoyancy suddenly swelled in her chest. She beat at the shutters, willing them to burst open, to give way to the window, so that she might shatter the glass with her bare fists, and destroy it. Just as devils, as Time, as goddesses, and heroes and love and her Ganondorf had destroyed her—

"Zelda! Zelda! No! No!"

Her violence had deafened her to the entrance of her lady. One moment she beat the shutters, the next she fell against the solid breast of her lady Impa, wrists caught in a scarred, iron clasp. "What are you doing?" Impa was shouting. "What are you doing?"

She began to shake the girl, who drooped and sobbed and pulled in a vain attempt to release herself. Finding her efforts useless, she began to blubber, her knees failing her. Somewhere, in the turmoil of her thoughts, she saw the futility of pleading, of demanding, of explaining the wild joy she took from destroying something. Surely, that was what she needed in this tower! No fabric, or useless attempts to sew clothes for refugees, but something to hurt and destroy and blight as she had been blighted. Her hands, she slowly realised, had been her first victims. What next, when shutters and hands were exhausted? Herself?

"Zelda..." Impa stopped shaking her, and lowered her to the flags. "Zelda, what is wrong?"

"I-I can't stand it up here!" Zelda sobbed. "Why do you abandon me? Why do you leave me here? I-I'll shatter the window when you're gone. I'll throw myself out!"

In her mind's eyes, she raised a blade, and began to stab her beloved Impa.

Impa sighed. "Zelda," she whispered, "I try, and I try. Why don't you tell me you don't like it up here? I would have brought you down. You know I would rather you were not up here. But you wished— You wished to stay here. You remember—?"

"Yes." Zelda raised a hand to her face, to the bandage about what once were her eyes. "I do. Dear goddesses, I do."

A deep, terrible pain suddenly exploded in her head, and she fell against Impa with a dry sob. "But don't leave me here, please!" The pain waxed, as though Death purposed to take her then and there, and then subsided, revealing itself to be naught but a memory. Her lungs gasped for air.

"You will come down," said Impa, pressing her head gently. "I think it will be good for the refugees to see you. They have wished to see you since the Fall."

"His fall," whispered Zelda.

"Yes," said Impa, and her voice was like rock, steeped in strangled fury.

"They clamour for the destruction of this tower, also," Impa continued. Zelda felt her straighten and stand, and the chill air was again upon the princess's skin. "It is a blight upon the landscape, and they remembered how he used to stand at that window, with his monsters..."

"I remember too," murmured Zelda. "He brought me here, in the pink crystal, before he—my eyes—"

"Don't speak of it," Impa snapped. The memory of pain filled Zelda's skull once more.

"It wasn't his fault," she whispered.

"His fault?" Impa's voice had again waxed strangled. "Not his fault? Who, Zelda, who was it who—"

She paused suddenly, and her shoes scraped the flagstone, as she spun aside, hissing.

Zelda rose, rubbing at the gooseflesh that had broke out upon her arms. "I'm too exhausted to be angry now, Impa," she said.

"Well what was that before? When I found you pounding the shutters?"

"That exhausted me. I'd lost my needle, and the fact I've lost everything else came upon me, and I was angry..." Her voice slipped bitterly into silence.

"Angry," muttered Impa, "and yet you speak of him."

"Yes, I do."

"Angry that all you ever owned was lost unto you, and yet you speak of him—" spitting the word.

"Yes, Impa. I speak of him."

Zelda stretched out a hand, and made her way to the window seat. "I was not angry with him," she said, "or else I am angry with the entire world. But I cannot hate him, nor the world. Only myself, my damned love, only Time—" She stopped abruptly, hissing, and a remnant of the anger was upon her, as she drove a fist into the wall at her side. "He did not ravish me as Time has. As Time has destroyed me and Hyrule and our only hope—"

"Hope has not been destroyed." Impa sank onto the seat beside her. "Remember, the hero came again, and saved us all."

"And destroyed whatever hope kindled for Ganondorf—"

"Zelda!" She felt Impa turn on her. "For Din's sake, what do you want?"

"Him, again." Zelda paused, rubbing a hand against her chest. "Ganondorf. He was my husband, you know."

"And he blinded you!" Impa hissed. "Cut out your eyes!"

"But it wasn't him," Zelda murmured. "It wasn't him and I know, for I'd seen him, as himself, and he was a good, good man..."

"Misguided, surely!"

"Misguided, yes." Zelda paused again, turned aside. "Misguided, _mavourneen_. Misguided and possessed... Just as I am."


	2. The Twilit Walk

**Chapter I: The Twilit Walk**

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* * *

**_Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore;_

_Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more._

- Homer ("Smyrns of Chios"), The Iliad

* * *

Beauty trembled on the twilit walkways, and hearkened to the voices of men, as they drifted through the garden. 

The girl—for it was of mortal flesh and maiden figure that Beauty was composed—leaned against the trellis behind which she hid. Her body quivered, and her hands, pressed against the woven slats, were like conduits, bearing shivers to the roses braided throughout the latticework. The trellis rattled softly. The girl pulled away, wiping the sweat from her palms, and brushed the girdle dangling from her waist. A knife-like tingle shot through her, and she winced, smothering gasps with a frightened glance toward the men. Impa had warned her against the girdle, though the king would have her wear it. "Zelda," Impa had murmured, "the girdle is crafted of a metal that shuns the magic you possess—try not to come in contact with it too often. It will hurt you." She had looked sadly at the girdle, and the gleaming jadestones afixed to it, and said, "I'm sorry girl. I truly am."

"Don't be." Zelda had smiled, faintly, she knew, but graciously, as such was expected. "I don't mind wearing it; I suppose it is only a reminder of my curse. Papa didn't know. And we can't offend Lord Ganondorf."

"What does Lord Ganondorf have to do with anything?"

"He is the one who gave it to me! through Papa of course."

And at this, Impa's face had become grey.

The pallor had frightened the girl, and it frightened her still. A vision came to her, one of the pall defiling her own face. She shuddered. It was a moment before she regained enough daring to peer again through the trellis.

A cream-coloured handkerchief lay in shade some yards from her, an token of light against the darkness. Surely, if the men came upon the wretched thing, it would give her away.

The girl leaned closer, pressing her eye to a spot between the roses. Shadows waved on the lighted walkway before her: long images, one of which was broad-shouldered, the other spread-legged, both wreathed in pale smoke. The shadows fanned from the mouth of a palace doorway, beyond which came the murmur of festivity. For a moment, the girl considered the scene that surely progressed within the belly of the Great Hall: the light would be violent, drenching a congregation of earls, ladies, barons, and knights in brilliance, while in dark corners breaths of music spoke of minstrels tuning their instruments. A portly chanteuse would sing bits of arias in her rich mezzo-soprano, noting how the flagstones writhed with humanity from beneath her thick, drooping eyelids. Such brightness, such nobility, such shimmering cloth and smiles and genteel laughter—it was enough to blind. The girl shuddered again, and drew away from the trellis. They sipped the blood of happiness, those myriad guests. Danced to airs and romped in gore - they, the witnesses to her ruin, reveled in the occurrence.

She put her eye again to the trellis, as thoughts drifted like webs in her mind. She could not understand why she bethought her forthcoming marriage ruin.

The night air was cool upon her neck. The girl brushed a strand of hair from her face, and felt the strand catch upon the rose thorns. Her fingers snapped, and haste brought her hand too close to the lattice. She felt a thorn scrape her skin; she flinched. A thin streak of film, like a surplus vein, had materialized. She squinted at it, and bit her lip. The scratch was blushing now. She hid her hand behind her back.

She suddenly remembered the conversation of the men standing in the palace doorway. It had stopped, and she paused, heart beating beneath the folds of silk lacing her breast. A moment later, her heart seemed the only sound in the vicinity. The girl waited. Had she been heard? Her hand twitched. Slowly, painfully, she drew it into sight, and examined the laceration. There was a sliver of blood upon it now, radiant against her chalky skin.

A slow, calculated sigh from one of the shadows dragged her attention from her hand. The image of spread legs shifted in the patch of light.

"Well then, Laird Ganondorf, I fear we ha'e run out of plain things tae say to one another, eh?"

There was a pause, and the broad-shouldered shadow shifted. "I suppose," said Lord Ganondorf. The girl drew breath, and bowed her head.

"One can't sustain a conversation on the weather, eh?" said the first speaker.

"I suppose not."

The shadow of the spread legs leaned with a confidential air toward his auditor. "And I say, how d'ye fancy marryin' my neice the princess in a fortnight or sae?" His voice was rustic, filled with satisfaction.

"I fancy it a needful occurrence."

"D'ye think the girl can ever love you? Will ye have any use faer her, beyond pleasin' my brothair the king?"

"She will be my wife."

The girl gave a strangled sigh, and clasped a hand to her mouth. Her quivering had grown in its severity, and her breath was raw and hot between her shaking fingers. She drew away from the trellis, her feet shuffling backward over the earth. There was a sharp crackle.

"Hi there, what's that?" The head and torso of the first speaker appeared around the bend in the palace wall. The head was small and crudely shaped, the face pinched and expression warped and unbecoming. The girl saw the man's frills and glittering medals, drooping from his swelled chest and scarlet jacket, and marked the single eyebrow, the bare pate, the tight lips, and near absence of a chin. The girl bent her eyes hastily aside, and peered through her narrowed lashes into the darkness behind her.

"Duke Chester, may the devil take thee unto himself," she murmured. The words came to her lips as though they were mantra.

"An animal, I suppose," said Lord Ganondorf. "I chanced upon a herd of deer in the southern portion of these gardens only this day."

"Ah, yes..." The Duke drew slowly aside, his green eyes raking the gloom. "I suppose so..."

He returned his gaze to his auditor with sudden movement, and laughed.

"Hi! I startled ye, eh; you weren' expecting me tae turn so quick were ye? Ye've spent a bittie too much time around the courts of my brothair this past week; they're all as languid as sloths, and among them ye canna find a man of my dispatch, hi!"

The girl turned back toward the patch of light in time to see the shadow of the Duke click his heels cavortingly.

"I suppose I have," said Lord Ganondorf. There was a smile in his voice.

The Duke laughed, and spoke again, but his voice was swamped by a burst of song from the Great Hall.

The girl bent closer.

"Och, the cursed songbird!" the Duke cried, stepping from around the bend, and into the gloom. "I canna stand her voice, 'tis like a man's. Come, let us take a turn about the gardens faer a wee moment. What d'ye say to that, eh Laird Ganondorf?"

"I trust I shall be missed," murmured Ganondorf. He moved some paces from the doorway. The girl suppressed a gasp, and pulled into the dark. She felt rose leaves skim her back, and heard their stirring, as she retreated into a wall smothered in their vines. She stopped.

"I can assure ye Laird Ganondorf, my brothair won' miss ye a bittie." The Duke strolled forward, his torso a mass of rolling fat, his legs slender incongruities upon which his corpulence was perched. The girl could make him out through the web of lattice before her.

"He won' miss ye, for the songbird sings now, and he loves her voice. Poor man; ye know, he was disappointed that his daughter ne'er had a sweet voice such as the chanteuse, or his wife faer that manner. Ye know of his wife, Queen Helene? She is mah sister-in-law, and a bonnie lass afore the sickness took her mind some year agone. The poor lady now foams at the mouth and mus' be locked in her budoir les' she injure herself in 'er lunacy..." The Duke paused, turning back, and winked. "I know 'tis not mah place tae tell ye of the Mad Queen, but I don' suppose the princess shall. She's a deal ashamed of her poor mama, and canna stand to see the foam and the way the woman rolls her eyes. She won' tell ye anything but her mama is dead when ye and she are one, and when the king dies and ye are the young queen's consort, it willna be pleasant when ye stumble one day upon her mama, a-droolin' and writhin' in her bed—"

"I would thank you to be silent," said Lord Ganondorf, suddenly.

The girl put a hand to face, and felt tears spilling down her low cheekbones and along her chin. She rubbed at them, her fingers trembling with revulsion. The mantric curse darted through her mind, and she stared with sickened hatred at the Duke. What was it that provoked his tongue so? That drove him to speak ill of herself and her parents? A vision clawed its way into her mind, a vision of a woman lying insensible upon a couch, spittle upon her lips, hands cold, rotting in her sleep...

Ganondorf stepped from the light, and the Duke rounded upon him. "Mah apologies, Laird Ganondorf," he cried, with ingratiating mirth. "I meant nae harm, on'y tae gi'e ye information."

"And why, my good man, would you think such... information, worthy of disclosure?"

"Why, mah good, good laird—" The Duke laid a fleshy palm upon the arm of his auditor, and Ganondorf turned aside, so that the palm slid from its perch. "Dinna be in dudgeon with me, 'twas mere family gossip. Ye are tae be family very soon. What harm can a wee acquaintance with the family gossip do?" He winked again.

Ganondorf was silent. The girl's daring restored, she crept forward, and peered through another space in the trellis roses. The lord was motionless, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on the walkway before him. The girl became aware of her heart, yet again, beating with increased violence in her bosom. Cold trepidation was seeping through her, beginning at her head, stealing in rivulets down her spine. Her hands curled. Lord Ganondorf spoke again, his voice low, and words articulate.

"It seems, my good man, that I am marrying into an emasculate family."

The Duke laughed, and the girl trembled at the sound's triumphant hue. "Och, but they aren't all that weak," he began, "though I must say, mah brothair has ne'er been very strong since the queen lost her mind. And the girl is a far better consort than a rulin' monarch. I should hope she attends tae her advisors, bein' as they are a deal maer experienced than 'erself."

"I see."

"But you, mah laird!" The Duke's buckled shoes scraped and clacked upon the walkway, as he bowed ostentatiously. "You ha'e nae tae fear, faer you are a man practised in the art of ruling, eh? You are a most gracious lord; afore you deigned tae grace the Hylian Plain with your presence, we palace men could only stand upon your reputation of inspiring love in the black hearts of yon Gerudo women." He paused, glancing up to see what impression his words had made upon the lord. Ganondorf was nodding.

"But now we no longer wait in darkness," the Duke continued. He straightened. "For hi! our light has come." He smiled, and his eyes vanished behind the knolls of his cheekbones. "We needn't fear faer our beautiful land now that you are here to marry the princess. When her father dies and she is made queen, we nobles shall know that a strong and honest man also sits upon the throne. Faer, you see"—he sighed—"The princess is a wee thing, and her knowledge not very keen. But you shall be a strong leader, once you have learned the Hylian traditions. You only need a man acquainted with them to learn them tae you."

The girl watched as a smile came to the face of Lord Ganondorf. It was a peculiar smile, failing to kindle his ruby eyes, bending his face into a grotesque mask. "I have only one question of you, my dear Duke," he said, after a moment. His voice was humorous.

"Anything, mah laird!"

"What is your intent?"

The Duke paused. A trace of understanding came to his face.

"Och, but a man mun ha'e friends in high places, mah laird," he replied.

Ganondorf's smile widened. "Yes..." he murmured. "You are a wise man."

He took a jaunty step forward and began to stroll down the path, the Duke close at his side. "My friend..." Ganondorf paused. "You say I have been in the Hylian court far too long—"

"To recall there are men o' my dispatch in the world!"

"Yes. But... I have been there long enough to... hear things of value."

"Aye?"

"Is it true you are disliked by the king and his daughter? And the girl's nursemaid?"

The Duke chortled. "Oh yes, I am a deal disliked. But they do not know what they hate!" He waved a hand. "They merely cannot appreciate my talents, and the like!"

"Thou art a wise, wise man. And what is the girl's nursemaid like?"

"Ah, you ha'e seen the iron-haired woman in the Great Hall, during supper, by the princess? That is her, in Sheikah dress, with merc'less frown. The woman's a witch."

The girl's indignation rose at the Duke's brash language, and her blood fermented.

"And what of the princess?"

The girl suddenly became cold.

The Duke smiled. "A sweet maid. You shall like her; she's a tractable girl, and bonnie, if ye are inclined to honey-haired girls with small ankles. She has a tendency to dream what the bishop calls prophetically, and often make a fuss out o' it, but that's due to 'er father and the cursed priest, as neither o' them ha'e half a brain betwixt their skulls. But yes. Ye shall like the girl."

"I see."

"And now, mah laird, if ye doan mind me inquirin'—is it true that ye are a wizard?"

"Yes," said Ganondorf. "It is quite true."

"And d'ye... d'ye truly sairch for... faer a power that shall bestow upon ye more than Providence haus gi'en ye?"

"Perhaps."

"Is it true—" the Duke was nigh breathless— "that ye sairch faer the Triforce itself?"

The shadows of a smile flickered over Ganondorf's swart face.

"Hi—!" the Duke exclaimed. He paused. "Whatever is this?"

The Duke bent to remove something trapped beneath his feet, and the girl's breath caught in her throat. She scrambled away from the trellis, and into the wall, and the Duke held out her handkerchief.

"It looks like some fair maiden's lost her hanky!" he laughed.

The girl could no longer see what transpired beyond the lattice, and shrank into the rose veined wall. Ganondorf said, "Allow me the handkerchief, good man." There was a pause, and then, "We should, perhaps, hasten back to the Great Hall. No further communication need be exchanged that cannot be exchanged within its confines."

"Bah, I see no reason to hasten!" The Duke thrust his arms above his head, and swung around, his bulk swaying. "But I suppose I sha' go in. 'Tis cold!" He laughed, and returned to the patch of light.

Silence descended.

The girl knelt, and ran her hand along her arms, so that chill bumps sprang to her skin, and caused her to quiver harder. She could not be sure if Lord Ganondorf had gone, and feared to check. She turned her attention to the air. It fell heavily, deep as hoarfrost—surely, the heat of the summer day should have lingered into the night, leaving traces of warm vapour to fondle the skin! But for reasons beyond her comprehension, the girl felt the chill came from elsewhere, from a source far distant from the mere absence of warmth in summer. She pressed her back against the wall and curled further into herself.

Several minutes passed. The patch of light dwindled, as the doors swung shut, and the girl told herself she must be going, before she was truly missed. She rose, brushing the dust from her skirt and hands, ears attuned to the darkness—still, only silence. She straightened, and stepped closer to the trellis.

A hand of iron was suddenly upon her wrist, and she screamed, swinging about. Her feet slipped from beneath her, and she toppled into the trellis, where it rattled, as though shaken by an angry Mars. Rose thorns furrowed her back. She gasped, and hands, larger than her own, grasped her shoulders and dragged her away.

"My apologies," said the voice of Lord Ganondorf. "I did not mean to frighten you, only to inquire..."

His grip grew tighter, and she hissed in pain.

"What you are doing out here, when the party within is being held in your honour."

Tears blurred her vision, and she wrenched her hand away, feeling the joints pop and expand. The agony sharpened.

"You needn't be violent princess."

Ganondorf loomed tall and dark above her, and held out a cream-coloured piece of material. "Is this yours?" he asked.

She nodded, and took the handkerchief from him.

"What were you doing here?"

"Is it wrong that I should be found ambling in my own garden?"

"I fail to see a connection between your avowal of ambling, and my vision of you huddled against this wall."

A bitter taste rose in her mouth.

"Do not keep me here—" she gasped.

He slid a hand beneath her chin, and brought her face close to his own. "I did not intend to," he said, gently.

He stepped aside, and she slithered past him, and onto the walkway. Her courage returned.

"You cannot take It," she declared.

"Pardon?"

"What you have come searching for. Why you have come to the Hylian Field."

"I have only come in search of peace, princess. Peace, and the treaties that will ensure it."

"You... you lie."

"I do?" He tilted his head.

"Please..." Her courage was failing, and she groped for some sliver of thought—some horror—that might recapture it; that might combat the emotion building within her. "Please... Do not deny what you come in search for. This is only a pretext—your peace—this marriage—that is all clear! But you will not obtain the Triforce because you cannot, I will not let you!"

"Are you sick, princess?"

"I will not let you!" Her voice rose to a fevered scream; mortified, she turned and scurried down the walkway. Coming to the doors of the palace, she slammed a hand against the panels. The doors sprang inward—so it appeared to the bewildered girl. Light poured again into that patch of garden, illuminating the princess, her pale face, her quaking form.

"Princess," said the concierge. The expression beneath his greased and faultless hairline was stunned.

She crept past him, and in to the brilliance of the terrible room. A woman sat by the door; Zelda caught her eye as she entered, and saw a scandalized front materialize on the woman's face. A chill ran through her. Whatever hope she might have had of an unmarked entrance had vanished: the eyes of guests fixed upon her.

Horror overwhelmed her. Her entire being revolted.

The princess spun about, and saw the doors swinging shut. She flung herself at them, breathless with a wish to be outside. To be free of this cruel, artificial realm, though he marred the solace of outdoors—

She was suddenly confused. Were all her dreams and fears, in truth, groundless? There had been some peace in Lord Ganondorf's presence; more than could be said to linger here. Perhaps there was chance that Lord Ganondorf searched not for the Triforce, as her dreams had said, but for the much needed peace between the Gerudo and Hylians, as he claimed. Perhaps there was a chance her marriage was not further imprisonment, but a strange manner of release.

Her dreams, after all, were a curse unto her.

Her reckless behaviour, despite her hopes, reaped her no reward. She cast herself into the garden yet again, and peered into the darkness for some sign of the Gerudo wizard. She saw nothing, nothing but the hedges and brick walkway, fading into the dark evening.

The air was no longer cold. It was warm, as summer nights were meant to be.


	3. Rumours

**Author's Note: **At long last—an update!

_Moonstruck_, lying cradled in the depths of my Macintosh, has the bulk of Part One completed. Happy circumstance saw an escalating cache of chapters and foundations born for the ease in writing of Part Two (were the scattered hints of Part One come to their culmination in… something epic, XD). Updates should occur more quickly, as a consequence. Of course, there remains the fact I must somehow build a resistance to procrastination… horror of horrors. Oh well.

I really appreciate everyone who has read this story, commented, and in other ways proffered _Moonstruck_ some small touch of your interest. Thank you tenfold. I really hope to make something of this fiction, and everyone who notices, scans, reviews, et cetera, is an asset to that hope. I hope I might repay everyone who takes the time to read this with something half-interesting and worth their time. Woot, woot!

And now, without further ado:

**Chapter II: Hamadryad  
**

* * *

_Oft fairy elves,_

_Whose midnight revels by a forest side,_

_Of fountain, some belated peasant sees,_

_Or dreams he sees…_

- John Milton

* * *

"I think," said Malon, "it shall be very humid today."

She pressed a finger to a misted pane of glass, watching the June haze spill sluggishly through the corral and wind itself over the walls enclosing the ranch. Dawn had not yet melted into the vague, opal cloak of morning, and already the ranch choked on lakemist. Stare as she might, she could not see the ranch hand, Eoin, below, loosing the horses into the corral. It was not the first time, since the summer had settled in, that Eoin and the horses had been hidden from her.

Malon pulled her finger from the pane, gazing at its solitary print. The print was large and graceless, a mass of spirals too closely pressed to be properly discerned. She set her mouth against the glass and breathed. A moment passed, and then she felt the slow trickle of moisture upon her lip. She drew aside. Her breath had turned to liquid, tracing paths through the vapor. She smiled.

"Oh yes, yes—Cook, it is going to be very hot today!"

She sprang to her feet, spinning to face the room behind her. It still looked of evening, dim without the candle, lit by a thread of pale, watery light that cast itself along the beds and walls and so laid dispersed that its radiance was of no avail. Its other occupant, Moira (known more officially as Cook), was nowhere to be seen. Hastening to the open door, and peering beneath the stair rail into the dark common room, Malon heard the rustle of cuckoos, and the scuff of slippers against the floor. A figure was moving into the kitchen.

"Cook!" she hissed. The figure paused.

"It is going to be very humid today!" Malon continued. "I can hardly see anything through the fog—"

"Did you bring my master's clothes in?" The brittle, timeworn voice from below was sharp, its owner returned to a faint patch of light cast in from the kitchen window. "I told you to."

"I did Cook. I brought in Papa's clothes like you said."

"That's Miss Sharpe to you!"

"Yes ma'am."

Malon stood, brushing dust from her knees, and retreated into her bedroom. Weather brings affinity, as it besets all mortals, but Moira Sharpe, the housekeeper, resided in the belief that she was above the mortal concern. When addressed by it, Miss Sharpe refused to answer, unless it pertained to her duty. Her sullen duty, these days, was to oversee the household of Malon's father, Talon. Bringing in the washing, therefore, meant a great deal to her. All else was unimportant. _And I_, Malon thought, plucking at the sheets of her bed in a show of making it up, _would be best to learn that_.

It might have been supposed that since Cook had taken charge of Malon's upbringing some years following the death of Malon's mother, that Malon would have grown into the knowledge of proper conduct towards her. But Malon was too familiar to be imprisoned by discretion. She was not troubled that Cook, formal and deadpan, had taken her beneath harshly chiseled wings only because it had been implied that as a housekeeper and seasoned woman, she should.

Malon loved her with a filial love. If she grew to anything, she grew in tolerance of Miss Sharpe's sour humours. The entire household tolerated these, because Cook cooked well and the kept the house inhabitable. Malon's father approved of her habits, and her care of his daughter, and no one found cause to mind the fact that Cook was not a woman to insert much passion into her tasks, and therefore did not enforce many of the lessons she taught Malon. There were always hired hands, of course, who came to help with ranch work in the autumn who were ready to do a bit of instructing, and so it was that Malon learned to spit, swear, and cachinnate. Cook could not be brought to care. She only made sure Malon knew how to churn butter, milk a cow and keep the house in decent order.

Malon could never be sure whether, if in the course of her upbringing, she had suffered any particular disservice at the hands of Miss Sharpe. A castle resided some leagues from the ranch, where, in all probability, maidens in fine kirtles, and knights most noble and chivalrous dwelled. Malon sometimes wondered that if she were set side by side with these distant personages, whether she would, or could, measure up to them. But she knew nothing of nobility or genteel townspeople, beyond the stories and gossip Eoin brought from the village of Kakariko, and so she could not properly compare herself or discover any disadvantages in her upbringing that could be attributed to the dispassion of Miss Sharpe. But she could not bring herself to care. Life upon the ranch was a delight, not to be troubled by distant peoples or measuring up.

Malon abandoned the bed sheets as soon as she had pulled them into some form of decency, and took her clothes from the wardrobe. The room was temperate, and she dressed with leisure, pausing when the thunder-like snores of her father rumbled from the behind the wall. His snoring grew louder every night, it seemed, lasting well into the dawn. Malon finished dressing and returned to the hall.

She paused at her father's door. His room was ample, bereft of windows. Malon's eyes, however, had adjusted to the gloom within. She watched Talon turn over, his great body lolled beneath the strewn knots of sheet and coverlet. His snores were beginning to wane. Malon smiled, drew aside, and paused for a moment at the door hedged in between her father's and her own. Here the steward Ingo and ever-present field hand, Eoin, who was Cook's brother, slept. The room was silent—Ingo, then, had also risen. Malon took her leave. She sprinted down the stairs, her bare feet heavy on the wooden steps.

The cuckoos roosting below were disturbed by the noise. Several fluttered from their roosts with shrill cackles, and flew across the floor, perplexed and agitated. Malon threw opened the front door, blinking in the fog.

"Out," she whispered, waving her arms and stomping at a rather imperious cuckoo, "out, all of you!" She chased the flock into the yard.

"Miss Sharpe!" she called, shutting the door, "has Eoin gotten any closer to finishing the coop? We can't keep those cuckoos in here for very long." She edged toward the kitchen, taking stock of common room and grimacing at the mess. Cleaning up after them was becoming quite a strain.

Cook, clanking pewter bowls and lighting the oven, did not answer. Malon had not expected her to and was not disappointed; taking a bucket from a corner, she stepped into the kitchen.

"Miss Sharpe, is there any water here?"

"Very little."

"I shall need some for the common room."

"Ye'll need tae fetch _that_ fraem the river."

"Please, Miss Sharpe, let me use the water in here?" Malon snaked an arm behind the kitchen door, and removed a mop. "I can hardly find my nose in the fog, much less the river. I shall go down earlier today then, yes? And you willna regret lending me the water." An assured nod punctuated this final sentence.

Cook paused, looked at her as a carrion crow eyes a rival, and turned aside. "Use it then," she said.

"Thank you."

No response.

Malon took the water, noting that there was more than enough for her purpose, as well as any purpose Cook harboured in mind. Smiling, she set to cleaning up the dribblings of the cuckoos. Ever since the coop had been damaged, tossed about in a violent, post-spring storm, the cuckoos had roosted inside on the common room floor like so many labourers. The arrangement was inconvenient, as cuckoos had no sense of gracious conduct, and Malon anticipated the day when they were moved outside, and did not come tracking mud and feathers in the evening.

Cook had complained when Talon announced his intention to bring the cuckoos in. Being a middling, stone-like woman who did things only because she was told, and kept them as scrupulous as she was capable so that she might not be told again, Moira had argued the case of the floor, the furniture, and the household. Talon was adamant, though he laughed and solicited. The cuckoos had moved indoors, and Moira had returned scowling to her kitchen. Eoin, rising to dismantle the trestle table, had said to Malon, "Now ye see the case of a woman who will ha'e her own household, but canna get it."

"But Miss Sharpe has household," Malon replied. "Doesn't she? She seems to do well here at the ranch."

"Aye, but here she's none but a housekeeper, who mun bend to the law of her master." Eoin smiled, circling the bench Malon sat upon, and lowered the tabletop carefully to the ground. "But had my sister her own household, she wouldna let the chickens in, and would ha'e beat the fool who suggested it."

Malon laughed. "But she can't beat Papa!"

"No lass, she's can't. And so, you see, a woman bereaved."

"But scorned she is not!"

"Quite true lass. Quite true."

Ingo, too, had been opposed to the relocation of the cuckoos. His had been a quiet argument, quietly broached, quietly relinquished. Malon did not care much for Ingo, neither his brooding face nor skeletal frame. She tolerated him with a toleration born of disgust.

The thump of footsteps lumbering about upstairs brought Malon from her reflections. She glanced upward, where ceiling and rafters creaked, and a thread of dust streamed from between the boards into the air. She smiled, noted her progress—her mopping came along quite nicely—and returned to her work. Moments later, Talon emerged, clumping down the stairs in his work boots to the sweet and moist savor of bacon cooking over the fire.

"Forenoon!" Talon called. His voice was thunderous in the close room. The call was unnecessary, but Talon knew of no other degree at which to put his voice, and so used the one suited to the fields and moors and earthen reaches of the Hylian terrain.

Malon grinned up at him. Her ears had become used to the loudness of her father, and she had been given, by the philanthropy of heaven, a tone to match his own. "Forenoon!" she returned, and gestured toward the trestle table, leaning beside the stairwell. "Would you like me to help you put that up?" She paused, glancing toward the kitchen. "Miss Sharpe's cooking breakfast and—" she lowered her tone—"she would have everything ready to receive it."

Talon laughed. "I'll get it," he said. "Only I mun go out faer a spell."

"There's a fog so thick ye canna see your nose!" Malon put in, as Talon moved across the space toward the front door.

"Is it?"

"Yes!"

"Ah..." Talon pulled open the front door. "'Tis a fog, that one. I wonder that the horses brave it. There's been a fair many like this since the summer, eh _machree_?" He turned to her, and Malon dimpled beneath his grin. "Aye, aye, one wonders..."

"Malon?" Cook had stepped from the kitchen. Malon flinched, swung around, and heard her papa laugh at her.

"Good morning sir," said Cook.

"Ye'll scare the life fraem the lass, Moira, mavourneen!" said Talon, winking, turning, and going out the door.

Moira flushed beneath the affection.

"Would ye have me do the eggs?" said Malon hurriedly, springing toward the housekeeper, and catching her feet on the mop. Girl and mop tumbled to the floor with a crash, while dimly, some manner of thanksgiving registered in Malon's brain. At least Cook would now have no time to reflect upon Talon's playful breach, calling her "mavourneen", my dear.

The noise recalled Miss Sharpe. The flush left her face, pale and veined in the ashen light, and she arched her brow down at Malon. "Aye, an' if ye mun shift yer idle self in such a manner I suppose it must be so. If ye ha'e done with the mop, put it up and come do the eggs."

"Yes ma'am." Malon stood, hopping to extricate herself from the tangle of mop. She lifted mop and bucket, set the latter in its corner, and followed Moira into the kitchen.

The morning light had strengthened, falling white and filmy upon the wooden floor. It spread timidly along the wall and everywhere else, and as sunup passed into full-fledged day, grew to embrace the ceiling and crowns of the cabinets. By the time Eoin reappeared, shaking sweat from his brow, the bacon and eggs had finished cooking, and the remaining grease rendered, set in a corner to cool.

"How are the horses this day?" Malon, pulling platters from a high shelf, asked.

Eoin smiled. "Fine lass, fine as e'er." He cut a gangly figure against the doorway, bent, long arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. A thin bit of leg stretched from beneath the rolled up hems of his cottony pants. Both sets of limbs were too long for his mismatched torso.

"You." Cook fixed her brother with a cruel, merciless eye, and nodded at the common room behind him. "Set up the table. Breakfast is done."

Malon started. "But Papa said he would put it up!" she protested.

"The master ha'e no call tae do a ranch hand's work chit, an' ye best remember it." Cook's glare shifted to Malon, who returned it with as much humility as she could muster. A tingle ran through her, messenger of some baleful sentiment. She bowed her head and turned aside.

"Yer papa's in the tower, lass," said Eoin, pulling back into the common room. His tone was apologetic.

Malon picked up the breakfast-ware and followed him. "What's he doing?" she asked, suppressing, with some effort, the sourness in her tone.

"Stackin' crates faer a delivery on the morrow."

"You mean to the castle?" Malon's brow wrinkled, as she set the plates on a step. "I thought you were delivering milk on the morrow."

"I was—" Eoin dragged a wide, splayed table leg before the hearth, and nodded at her to bring its twin. "But yer faither ha'e took it to his head tae deliver milk 'imself."

Malon lifted her eyebrows. "Aye now? Yer not joshin' are ye?"

"Nope. I wish I were though."

"Why?"

"D'ye remember yer father's young friend, Master Conor, from Kakariko?"

They had been lifting the tabletop from the floor, and Malon nearly dropped her end in a burst of excitement.

"Oh, I remember him! He had the greyhounds, didn't he? And he works in the kennels of the king?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I liked him, I think. Why do you mention him?"

"The king is takin' 'imself and a gran' Gerudo lord—who has been some fortnights at the castle—on a hunting expedition down by the lake. Conor sometimes visits here when the king and 'is dogs are off, and if he comes today he will be mos' eager tae goo with yer papa, as, if ye recall, they a pair of goodly chums." Eoin's face fell a bit, and he handled the tabletop with some mildness that made assembly move slower than usual.

Malon, unconscious of this change in pace, grinned with budding glee. "Do you think," she asked, "Papa would let me go deliver milk with him?"

Eoin paused. "Perhaps." He settled the tabletop onto the legs and peered at her in a musing fashion, then continued, "Aye, perhaps he will. He needs a pair o' eyes on him. And as faer yersel', ye ha'en't much been beyond the ranch, eh? Perhaps..." He paused again. "Well, lass. All ye mun do is ask."

Malon clapped her hands together. "Yes!" she cried. "I shall ask him right now!"

She turned as if to sprint out the door, but suddenly recalled the table, turned about, and grabbed the plates.

"Will ye mind putting these on the table?" she asked, tone plaintive, eyes pleading. "I want to ask Papa now..." She lowered her voice. "Faer, you see, it might be a bit uncomfortable asking him when Miss Sharpe's at the table, though I mean no offence. But you, being her brother, should know she wouldn't take a fancy to the plan, since I have chores..."

Eoin laughed and took the plates. "Ye needn't gab more and waste yer time lass," he murmured. "Here, goo now! Befaer Moira gets you!"

Giggling, eyes crinkled with laughter, Malon shoved the plates toward him and sprang barefoot into the fog.

---

It was rare that Malon ever saw her Papa involved in physical labour. There were the hands to do those kinds of things, he said, "Faer if you're tae have farm hands, what's the use of taekin' yersel' out there and doin' what they are hired tae do?" It was not in Malon to suppose this philosophy sprung from laziness. In fact, doting upon her father, for all his faults, as she did, she was more or less inclined to agree with this philosophy, and fight its critics. Malon herself was not opposed to work. She'd been born cheerfully disposed to labour, and if Moira had accomplished _anything_ she had impressed, with grim stares and dark words, the importance of work upon her charge. So it was somewhat discomfiting for Malon to think her papa didn't give a half ripe fig for digging in the loam or mucking stables. It grieved her to watch him lounge about, giving free rein to the hands and Ingo, their steward, asking only for something to cool his manly thirst in return for his leniency and lack of involement. It grieved her doubly to hear him spout promises and never fulfill them. But today, as she skipped through the yard toward the tower, she felt indulgence welling within her. So Talon was stacking crates, readying them for tomorrow's delivery. It was a noble task.

She reached the tower. Laughing, Malon flung the door open and skipped inside, kicking up shreds of grass and dew. She would tease him, she would tease her lazy papa and ask why he—and then she saw Ingo.

The steward was standing beside her father. His skeletal hands grasped crookedly at the air, and his thin, bent frame was ignominiously stuffed into an ill-fitting set of gaudy apparel. Talon had grown stout in the years before Ingo's arrival at the ranch, and had cast aside the clothes his steward now wore. The clothes had littered the floor of his wardrobe. How long they might of lain, no one could say, but as fate would have it, Ingo came into stewardship ill-equipped in the way of apparel. Talon resolved to dress him up in the abandoned clothes, as though Ingo were a broken doll in want of renovation. But Ingo hadn't seemed to mind—he minded nothing that came to him second-hand, for he was one of those grateful, humble people who took what was given to him with a bowed head. It was not this trait in him that repelled Malon.

No, something else about him nauseated her. To see him there, standing in that monopolizing position beside her father, frightened and repelled her. To note his look, his hard eyes glinting beneath the slits of their lids, repulsed her. She knew they had been talking; Ingo, telling her father things, complaining, his voice like the poison of a death cap.

She sometimes wondered what had possessed her father to let this man into the ranch. And then she wondered about the many things that possessed her father.

"Malon!"

Malon jumped. Talon was grinning, as he slung a crate on top of a small pile of boxes. "Come and gi'e yer papa a hug!" He slid his thick fingers out of the spaces in the boxes and held out his arms.

Malon, looking at Ingo, advanced slowly. Ingo had turned and was watching her, his face the color of paste, his expression blank. Sunlight caught the marble darkness of his eyes; he blinked and turning to Talon, said,

"Talon... ye'll lis'en to me now. The wages ye pay yer hands are too high, an' I think ye'd ought to bring 'em down a mite. Those bottles are expensive." He looked pointedly around him. "Yes, an' so are the other costs. Taekin' care o' the horses, an' such. The hands are gettin' lax; we ought cut their wages—"

"Botheration!" Talon cried, laughing, dropping his hands. "Ye leave me alone now, steward, leave me alone! I'll ha'e none of your complaints today, naer tomorrow, faer I'm off to the market on that day, and I willna ha'e your words haunting me when I am!"

Ingo paused. His left temple twitched; turning, he put a hand to it. He glanced at Malon again.

"Miss Malon," he said. "Mornin'."

Malon started, gulped.

"Morning sir," she said.

"Have things been good faer ye so far?" He was advancing toward her.

Malon stepped closer to the crates, stumbling a little as her shins collided with the sharp edge of a box. "Yes, very well," she said.

Ingo reached out and caught her arm. "Whoops," he said. "Almost took a tumble." His reflexes were remarkably spry.

His hand was hot, and moist with sweat, and Malon felt sick. _Let me go_, she thought, trying desperately not to jerk away. _Please, let me go_.

He let her go.

"Think abou' it Talon," he said. "Ye mus' cut the wages."

And then he was gone, shuffling out the door and into the fog.

Talon shook his head. "That auld steward," he said, chuckling. "Always wantin' tae cut the hands' wages. Eh, soon enough Eoin and Moira an' the others won' have any reason tae be breakin' their strong backs on my land. The pay won' be worth it."

"Will they leave?" Malon asked, gingerly wiping her arm on her skirt.

"I doan know." Talon picked up a final crate and set it on top of the last stack. "There," he said, and dusted his hands. "Eoin'll come an' fetch these at some point."

"Papa?"

"Hmm?"

"Are ye gooin' tae town tomorrow?"

He smiled at her. "I sure am. Thought I'd goo out fer a spell."

"May I come with ye?"

He cocked his head. "Aye?"

"Aye!" She folded her arms behind her back, and began to rock back and forth on her heels. "I haven't been outside the ranch except on Cook's bidding," she said, "an' I would sore like not be under her thumb faer a day or so." An ebuillent flush came to her face, as she shyly continued. "An' I would love tae goo with you, and deliver milk tae the castle. I've ne'er been inside, only looked through the gate once or twice. I could help ye unload! I'm strong; I can help! I've carried buckets o' water faer Cook before! Hauf a mile from the river!"

Talon chuckled, and put a contemplative hand beneath his chin. "I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'!" he murmured.

"Please Papa?"

Talon grinned, and his hand fell away. "Ah... if ye insist. Ye probably should get out anyhow."

"Thank ye Papa! I love you!" she cried, and clambering over a hedge of crates, hugged him. His grin widened.

"Ah, off with ye lass," he said, patting her back. "This the only time ye love me?"

"Papa!" she said, and laughed. She forced the laugh to go on, to cover the sudden, painful thump of her heart. And when she had hugged him she sprang away and ran outside, breathing hard in the fog, her lungs pounding. She felt nearly suffocated. The air was warm, no balm for her ragged breath. Her breath was ragged with horror, weak with a slowly creeping misery.

Her papa had not meant that.

---

She lay in bed that night, and thought she heard a child crying. Perhaps it was merely the wind... but her mind was active, and as she watched dregs of fog drift between the starless sky and her window, she told herself there was a child. Perhaps it was a faery, sobbing by the moonlit banks of the River Cerulean. The water and the hills would be silvered, and the faery was a pixie, weeping during its first night in the pearl-strewn realms of Heaven. People said pixies were the spirits of dead children, and Malon could imagine a weeping pixie, crying as it remembered its mama and papa and siblings and earthly body. But the tears would pass, eventually, and the pixie would awaken to the faery paradise Death had whisked it to. It would then be about its games and pranks, at home with its new life.

But somehow she did not think the sobbing child was a pixie.

Perhaps a Stalchild wept—but no, she could not imagine one of the grizzly, fabled Stalchildren weeping. Maybe a nymph, slinking from the black water to bemoan some loved one, some tragedy. But there was a quality to the trilling sob that disallowed this; maybe it was a forest lad, then, wandering from his sylvan house in the canopies of the distant Kokiri Forest. He was lost, disoriented, desperate to find his way back home. Perhaps he was a hamadryad, set on capering outside the realms of trees he was born to protect, and was frightened, and ashamed now that he had left his grove alone and unprotected. Perhaps there would be consequences for his disobeidience to the decree of Nayru and Farore.

Sleepily, Malon clung to the dragon ornament about her neck, and set to building a reality for her hamadryad. _You are a hamadryad_, she thought. _Sworn to protect a tree. But perhaps you left that tree, and it died, and you fled Kokiri Forest, and are now wandering our Hylian plain. You are dressed in green, like the faeries in Mama's stories, and over your lonely head a ball of light flits; a faery, for Mama once said all hamadryads have faeries to guide them. But even she does not know the way home. Perhaps there is a way home, but it rambles. Why else would you wander upon our plain, crying, in your green? Something keeps you from turning back, and you must go forward. I will help you Faery Boy. I will help you find your way home..._

She fell asleep, still holding the necklace, lulled by the whispers of her own dreams.

She did not dream of faeries.


	4. The Stolen

**Author's Note: **This is a test of fan fiction (dot) net's capabilities to the highest degree. ::Clasps hands in entreaty:: Let it work, O.o Oh _please_, let it work...

**Chapter III: Rhiannon**

* * *

_"Many, many years ago, in a time an' place far removed from this, there lived a maiden. She was a sweet an' clement thing, an' loved nothing better than to haunt a grove of beautiful trees, where she would talk to the faeries that lived there. Oh, she ne'er saw any of them of course, for the faeries are reclusive by nature, and hide themselves from the eyes of man, but the maid loved to sit in their grove anyway, by the banks of a clear white and gold stream._

_"She was content tae live this way faer the rest of her life, but the Fates wouldn'a let her be. The maiden came back tae her village one day, an' her mama and papa told her that she was to be married to one of the village warriors. Ah, the girl was mightily distressed by the news, and she ran fraem her house, and back tae the grove, where she threw herself on the banks of the white an' gold stream, an' began to weep. Her parents and the villagers didn'a understand—what anguished the lass? Shouldn'a she be cheery tae hear such?_

_"But the maiden was not happy, an' so she cried—"_

_"Why was she unhappy, Mama?"_

_"Ah... I'm sure she thought that if she were married off, she could ne'er again come and visit the grove and stream and the faeries."_

_"But could she?"_

_Lady Rhiannon smiled slyly, shifting her weight on the bed. Malon giggled; as her mother moved, her little feet, draped in a warm, heavy coverlet against the November chill, slid into the depression her mother made. "You'll see," Rhiannon said._

_"But the maiden couldn'a be happy, and cried. And as she wept, she heard a rustle in the grove behind her. She turned, startled. A young man had come up behind her. He was tall, and bore himself exquisitely, and his clothes were finely woven, his brow girdled by a crown of light. 'Surely ye are faery," she cried, faer she could plainly see he was'na human. 'An' so I am,' he replied. 'One of the very faeries ye love tae talk to in this grove. But firstly lass, tell me why ye weep.'_

_"'Ah, good faery,' she said, 'I weep because soon I am to married to a warrior in my village.I fear I shall ne'er be able to come down here again! Faer I love the Fair Folk as my own blood. There is something in the trees, good faery. Something in this bank, something in the white and gold stream...' And she looked tearfully toward the flowing waters. The faery gave her a curious glance and seated himself beside her. They talked faer a while, an' then the faery rose an' was gone. The maiden went back to her village."_

_"Mama! What did the faery say to her?" Malon had sat up, eyes bright in the tallow candlelight._

_Rhiannon smiled again. "I would've have said if ye were supposed to know, machree."_

_"Yes Mama," said the little girl, falling back sulkily._

_"Anyhow... the girl went back to the village and sadly told her mama and papa she would marry the warrior. An' so preparation faer the wedding began. But the maiden took no joy in any of it. The day of the wedding finally dawned. The grass was heavy with the scent of dew, and the whole village assembled on a lawn that glittered with it, dressed in their finest clothes. The warrior-groom stood at the front , waitin' faer the wedding to begin, but the maiden ne'er came. At last her mother went back to see if she was still getting dressed. The woman soon came back._

_"'She's gone!' the poor mother cried. 'My lass is not back there; she's gone!' A search party was immediately formed, and the villagers rushed off tae find the girl._

_"They at last came to the grove. They stopped short o' it, faer they knew of the faeries that dwelled there, an' were a mite fearful. But as they paused, they suddenly saw her, the maiden, standing just inside the trees. She was in her wedding clothes, trim and pale, near lost her weddin' wreath. 'Lass!' her papa called. 'Child, come back to us!' But she didn'a move._

_"There was a rustle in the grove, an' the faery she had spoken with the day before appeared. He held out a hand tae the maiden, and she took it. He led her into the grove, beside the white and gold stream, an' then he let her go, and stood back. The maiden lifted her arms, looking with a radiant smile at her beloved trees. And suddenly her fingers became leaves and her arms twisted boughs, and her body a trunk...! The girl became one of them."_

_"Oh... Mama..."_

_"The villagers were aghast. They set up a cry faer the maiden, but she ne'er came back to them. An' so they wen' away sadly and mourned faer the girl, trapped, sae they thought, by the faeries. But the maiden had not utterly left them. Faer one day the poor, distraught mother wandered into the grove, and heard the white and gold stream, and the ever rustling trees, whispering the syllables of her daughter's name..."_

_Rhiannon stopped._

_"Well?"_

_Malon was staring at her, wide-eyed. "That was scary," she said at last._

_Rhiannon cocked her head. "You think so?"_

_"The maiden turned intae a tree!"_

_"True..." Rhiannon nodded slowly. "But perhaps, had she married, she might ha'e turned to stone with pain."_

_ Malon considered._

_"Mama?" Returning her attention to her mother. "Could I turn into a tree?"_

_Rhiannon frowned. "As Farore is merciful, I hope ye sha' not."_

_"Why not?"_

_Rhiannon did not answer. _

_"Mama?"_

_"Yes machree?"_

_"Are faeries real?"_

_"Oh yes Malon... they are..."_

_"Perhaps a faery knight will take me away then." Malon folded her arms, examining her mother's face with studious concentration. "Faeries doan seem particularly concerned with beauty, when they take people away. I'm not very pretty, am I? Cook says a goat's face is fairer to look at. Do ye think a faery would take me away if I were very pretty, or no? I should dearly like to—"_

_She stopped._

_Her mother looked... very strange. Some quiet agony drew lines, like tear stains, down her cheeks, and her skin was like paste, barren of even a hint of healthful blush._

_"Mama?"_

_Her mother touched her arm, and Malon was suddenly cold._

_"Malon!" Rhiannon's voice was low, underlined with urgency, disconcerting. "Don'a ever wish tae be snatched away by a faery!"_

_"Why not?"_

_"No, Malon, say this! You will never wish tae be taken away by a faery!" She took Malon by both arms, and alarm churned in Malon's stomach like nausea._

_"I won't! Oh, Mama, I won't!"_

_And then it was as though the pale brow and the creased cheeks had never been. Rhiannon's grip relaxed; she drew her daughter forward, pecked her gently on the forehead, and hugged her._

_"Ah, but ye are the most beautiful Malon in the whole wide world, machree," she whispered. "Ye ne'er worry what Cook says." _

_It was a moment to savour. Her mother's arms were a cradle, her mother's mahogany-red hair a pillow of down. Malon pressed her face into the down, smiling to herself. She did not often notice her mother's scent, and when she did, was startled, though pleasantly so, by it. It was not the cool scent of freshly-mown hay, nor the smell of cream and yoghourt, or bread or perfumes, made from attar of rose or the essence of herbs. No, her mother smelled of horses, of brine, of the lowering fog that veiled the distant lake of Hyrule, of damp, dewy grasses. She buried her face against her mother's shoulder and closed her eyes, and all about her water lapped, an interminable body, far greater than the River Cerulean she knew, greater even than Lake Hylia, with which she was little acquainted._

_She wondered if her mother smelled like the ocean. Rhiannon had sometimes told her of the ocean._

_"Mama?"_

_"Hmm?"_

_"Are you the ocean...?"_

_But her mother no longer cradled her. Her mother lay in her own immense bed, and she was hissing brokenly through her teeth, and Malon had crept onto the bed trembling uncontrollably, face burnt beneath an assault of tears._

_The room smelled of sickness, but she knew her mother was not ill. No cold ailed her, no winter cough wracked her chest, and yet her torso writhed as though she were torn by some malady. The stench of infirmity was suffocating. Malon blinked, dimly wondering if her tears would strike her blind. She longed to close her eyes, but to do that would be to shut out the suffering that made her mother hiss and gasp. She could not bear to hear her mother suffer. No, she must see._

_"Mama...?" The word slipped weakly from between her trembling lips, and Malon stretched out a hand, and touched her mother's chest. Rhiannon gave a strangled cry and Malon flinched back. Rhiannon made as if to kick her legs, but there was no accomplishing that feat. Her legs were broken, crushed useless by a wagon, and so was her lower body. The doctor said she was not to move and had even hazarded that she was impaired beyond movement. And yet, in spite of his dire, solemn pronouncements, Malon's mother moved, and there was something inhuman in the way she twisted and struggled, as though she fought something other than the pain of her injuries._

_"Mama, please, don't move!" she begged, and stretched forth a placating hand. Rhiannon paid her no heed._

_Her lips moved, and her eyes dilated, as sweat coated her brow and slid down the sides of her head. Her red hair was damp, splayed on the pillow, wild like the mane of a wild horse, and Malon smelled the scent of brine and horses again. The scents were sharp and acrid, as though sweating, frothing horses struggled with her mother at the bedside, as though an angry sea fell madly upon ships and battered the land under cover of stormy darkness. Inarticulate sounds were bubbling to Rhiannon's lips. They grew louder, more articulate; she screamed, "Leave me, you witch! Leave me; dear God...!" Her arms shot flailing upward, and Malon sobbed despite her resolutions. Her father did not know she was in here. Her father did not know anything except that his wife was dying and he must drown himself in drink as the doctor urged, for the doctor did not want him up here, and the doctor did not want the daughter up here either, but the doctor had stepped out for a moment, attending to the call of nature._

_"Mama, stop moving! The doctor said—" Malon choked. "The doctor said—"_

_"Damn you, get away from me!"_

_The bed rocked as Rhiannon screamed and struggled. She was still flailing, calling execrations upon something only she could see. And then she was grasping at her throat, her hands shaking as though with palsy._

_Rhiannon's hands gripped convulsively at something tied about her neck: a yellow kerchief, from which hung the small, snarling face of a dragon had been worked from iron. Her fingers curled into the yellow fabric, pulled madly at it; she was choking herself. Malon broke off in mid-sob. She would not cry—she could not cry—when her mother was in such pain. "Mama, let me help you, please..." She reached out, but her mother's exertions increased their violence, stopping Malon from offering any assistance. _

_Rhiannon was growing more desperate. She was losing control of her hands, and fought to retain it; her fingers clawed at the necklace, and sweat broke like a fountain from her brow. She gasped, shuddered, tried to touch the iron dragon's head again and gave a muffled shriek._

_"Mama! Let me take it off!" The pain of seeing her mother suffer filled Malon with a strange sensation—anger perhaps, rising upon the tides of fear. She leant over Rhiannon, pushed her flailing hands aside, reached behind her neck and undid the kerchief. _

_The work was difficult. As she pulled, the metal dragon moved, slid into the vale between her mother's throat and chest. Rhiannon gave a convulsive jerk, bit down upon her lip. Tears crawled down Malon's cheeks, and she tried to ignore her mother's hands, gripping the bedspread, sinking into the mattress. Rhiannon's breath was shallow and ragged, her eyes wide with pain. Malon's fingers slipped, dribbled with sweat; twice she nearly lost her grip. But at last, the kerchief was untied. She drew it gingerly into the tallow light, hands trembling, damp with her sweat and that of her mother._

_"Was it choking you Mama?" she whispered. "Was it—?"_

_Rhiannon reached blindly for the kerchief; Malon handed it to her and watched her fumble with the ends, tie them into a rough knot. Her breathing, calmed when the kerchief was removed, was again growing harsh and terrible to hearken. She turned half-glazed eyes upon her daughter, thrust the kerchief toward her._

_"Never take it off!" she gasped. "Never, ever, ever, take off this pendant!"_

_"Mama—?"_

_Rhiannon's arms lurched taut, pressing the knotted kerchief to Malon's head, yanking down. Malon gave a muffled cry. Her mother's efforts were hurting both of them. She grabbed the fabric and guided it over her head; Rhiannon dropped it about her nec and fell back, deserted by strength, gasping and twisting. Malon felt a sharp sting as the dragon's head touched the skin of her neck, slid past it and rested against her chest. It felt as though a dagger had been pressed gently to her skin, drawn downward by the softest of touches. Her mind was a fever of terror._

_"Mama? Mama! Oh please, for Farore's sake, don't move!"_

_"She won't get you now Malon." Rhiannon's words were directed at her daughter, her eyes upon her face but not within reach of Malon's eyes. "She'll have me, she'll have me now, but she'll never take you, by Din, never! You have your father's blood, you have this necklace, you have this love, you have your father's love, and she'll never—she'll never—"_

_And then Rhiannon screamed._

_Her torso arched, as though grasped by the invisible fingers of a giant, and she were being dragged from her bed. Her screams grew piercing, as the arch became an impossible one; she was snapping in half, Malon thought, dear God, my mother's snapping in half!_

_But she did not snap in half. The invisible giant released her, and she collapsed onto the bed with a sickening cry—no, not a human's cry, but a horse's bray, a horse's shriek of pain. Malon could see her neck straining, gleaming and oozing with sweat. And then the neck was no longer that of a woman, but the neck of a horse, a long, powerful, mahogany-red neck. Rhiannon's beautiful hair was vanished, her proud, lovely face transformed into a horse's mane and face, contorted with pain and fear. There were no longer flailing arms and hands, but flailing hooves and forelegs._

_Malon screamed, flinging herself backward to avoid the hooves. She lost her balance, fell off the bed. Her head hit the floorboards; blackness surged from the shadows of consciousness to embrace her. She struggled against it, felt pain sweep in to take its place. Head throbbing, eyes blotted with black dots, she stumbled to her feet, sank against a wall, and sobbing weakly, watched her mother's transformation._

_The horse was complete now, twisting half on its side upon the bed, struggling to right itself. There was foam at its mouth. Malon drew deeper against the wall, willed the horse to disappear, to return her mother. There was a commotion outside the room. She could hear the doctor bellowing, the nurses in his company babbling, but she could not be sure if they knew what was happening._

_Talon was suddenly in the room._

_He stumbled forward, screaming, "Rhiannon, dear Farore, no! No no NO! I won't let you! Won't let you! Please, NO!" Malon saw him tousled and bleary-eyed, wild, frightened._

_The horse had regained its feet. It bucked as Talon drew closer, knocking into a night stand. Talon threw out his arms. For a moment it was as if he were confronting a wild mare on the lakeshore, a dance between the captive and kidnapper, a dance of wills, determination, wild, frothing fear. Malon could smell the ocean, penetrating the growing murk of unconsciousness. They dance again, she thought suddenly, as once they did, and one won many years ago. Now the other must win..._

_She was slumping against the wall, eyes drooped, drawn into the black like a fish to the surface of the lake. She felt every cell in her body beginning to slip, felt the slow halt of her bodily processes that kicked her knees from under her and threw her to her floor. As Malon fell, a light filled the room, a soft, gentle pall of rose. There was the scent of attar, of water tiding over cliffs and washing the rock formations; of hay, freshly mown, and the earth after a cleansing rain. The horse neighed, frightened, turned and lashed in an attempt to quit the scene, but trapped by its impressive breadth. Talon's shouts faded, and became pleas._

_There was a woman in the room, a tall, golden, celestial woman, dressed in vines that wound about her body. Her body was strange, chiseled about the joints, round in her limbs and torso. There were roses flowering upon the vines, roses twined in her pink hair, blood-red against her pale, bloodless skin. She hovered inches from the ground, toes pointed downward in a graceful arch. Her face was long and sculpted, worked from marble, fey and merciless all at once. She held out a plump hand to the horse._

_"Come back, Rhiannon," she whispered. "You have been gone too long."_

_And before her eyes, what had once been Malon's mother reared, and vanished._

_Talon screamed, threw himself at the feet of the faery lady, sobbed and made garbled entreaty. She ignored him, turned her gleaming eyes about the room, and lighted upon Malon. She smiled. The august majesty of her face was blinding._

_"Sleep, my love," she whispered, "sleep and dream till you must wake." She paused, glanced finally at Talon, added with a contemptuous arch of her eyebrow, "Sleep, all. I came for but one..."_

_And then sleep was upon Malon._

_It was odd to awaken in a dream, but Malon did, at last, and found herself lying in her bed, where once her mother had sat and wove stories. Her father leaned over her now, weary-eyed, sad, dressed in a handsome suit of clothes Malon had once helped Rhiannon sew him._

_"Come lass," he murmured. "The funereal."_

_Horses came at once to Malon's mind; she sat up and gasped, "Where is Mama?"_

_"Yer Mama's dead lass." His voice was so soft, so resigned, that it seemed he had sat awake for many days, drilling this knowledge into his brain. Perhaps he had._

_"But the faery—but the faery lady took her! Papa, Mama is a horse! A faery horse! Papa—"_

_Talon put his hands beneath her arms and lifted her from bed, settled her on the cold floor. He was silent for a moment, regarding a space above Malon's head, visibly fighting with some impulse to tears or other expression of sorrow._

_"Lass, you dream. You mother died two days ago, in her bed, from her injuries. The ladies came from Kakariko; they've done what they could and now she's tae be buried. It's as though ye've been sleepwalkin' lass. Ye donna recall 'em? I suppose not."_

_Malon saw her mother before she was laid beneath the ground. She had been groomed and dressed in the clothes of her wake, a beautiful, faery green that had once been the glory of her shape and hair. She looked wasted in it now, cold, unsmiling, her thin arms folded upon her chest. She looked sunk into the wooden coffin, as though it was here that she belonged. But Malon, gazing at the stiff, could not reconcile her mother with this alien figure. She saw the emaciation, where once there had been round health and life, at the frozen, unhappy mask where once smiles flitted like butterflies. Her hair had been undone and was about her like a maiden's, but it was more akin to straw that Rhiannon's hair had ever been. Malon knew this could not be her mother. Her mother lived somewhere, and this wasted corpse was but a changeling, a stick molded by the faeries to resemble what they had stolen. Malon had always thought faeries stole only children—but the faery had come for "but one". Perhaps her mother had been a faery, a changeling. Perhaps the faery queen had returned for her, at long, long last._

_She watched the coffin lowered to the ground, and did not cry._

* * *

Where pink stone arches support a film-laced roof, and shallow pools bubble, scented of rose of attar; here the faery hovers, poised and shining, playing with her vines and rose-pink hair. She floats amid the wings of her subjects, the clear waterfalls of wind and water, the haunts of roots, burrowed deep into the forest. She lives beneath the forest, above the world, in a Grecian palace hued from rock, in the cloudless realms of the sky. She lives with her subjects, balls of light that drift on wings, who obey her with wide-eyed alacrity, ever watching, at her command, the people of the mortal realm. 

Some call the Faery beautiful, but like the term "Fair Folk", "beautiful" is but a name the careful folk employ. How can beauty, so enamoured of itself that it sought to add to its charm, and in the end warped itself, ever remain beauty? It is ugliness, the ugliness of... perversion. But what careful person ever blurts the truth? As the cruel are known as fair, so the ugly are known as beautiful.

The faery knew of her own self, knew of the death she had brought upon her beauty. Still she lingered in denial. People say that beauty does not matter; it is lauded, but in the end, it does not matter. But all know better than this. Beauty has mattered for centuries; it will not cease to matter now. The Faery knew this truth and had done her best to rise to Beauty's fullest peaks, but she had fallen short, fallen beneath its foot and become a Painted Butterfly. Yet she lingered in denial. Where beauty is all, there is too much pain in admitting one does not have it.

But she had beauty now, beauty in the eyes of her subjects, in the eyes of her lover. Shaking her hair from between her fingers, she turned to the furthermost part of the cavern, where the rose light grew dim and vanished into dusk, and a tunnel of stardust spiraled to the ceiling.

"Has my lover come?" she asked.

"Oh, my lady, I believe he has!" The report came from a fairy, who flitted about on her silver wings and beckoned to the stardust portal. "He has just come down, to see your radiant grace."

"Admit him."

The fairy ducked and careened off. The faery queen rose till her head nearly touched the pink quartz roof. She glanced casually to the side, thought a name and watched her memories flicker before her eyes. Rhiannon's daughter. The little girl was lying in bed, her hand about the iron dragon's head, sleeping. The faery watched her for a moment.

"Poor child," she said. "I do not envy the pain your mother has laid upon you. Here..."

She turned to the image, thought of faeries and placed the girl among them, riding a milk-white steed. She saw the girl stir, smile, and smiled back at the image. She need not suffer, while she slept. Not when she, the Faery Queen, could give her such happiness.

"My lady," murmured the faery. She had returned, tiny head bowed and eyes bent upon the cavern pool below.

The queen smiled, turned from the image. "Has he come?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. He waits just outside this chamber."

The queen laughed. "Ganondorf," she cried, as the faery drifted away, "Ganondorf, my love, come to me!"

He came.

* * *

**Author's Gratitude:** I do believe this little experiment has worked. _Thank you, Metallicflame._


	5. Market Town

**Chapter IV: Market Town**

* * *

It was the pungent smell of Cook's broth simmering over the fire that awoke Malon the next day. The little girl lay for a while, groggy and disoriented, her mind filled with the dreams from which she had lately risen. There had been so many! Had she truly dreamed of a faery boy, crying beside the river, as she had dreamed of her mother, telling stories and transforming into a horse? The dreams sank into one another and became entwined; surely, in one, she had ridden a faery horse in the company of fay, and heard the boy's sobs upon the wind, as her mother and father danced beside a river. Certainly, all these things had happened.

Malon sat up, yawning. The fingers of her left hand were cramped, and glancing at them, she saw the red imprint of the dragon's head. Malon frowned. Had she clung to it all night? She did not remember her hand closing about it, did not recall her warm fist against the skin of her chest, clutching the iron head with a religious intensity. The dragon's head had settled once more under her nightgown. The sight of it buried there, in stark contrast to the white of her homely gown, reawakened the memory of her dreams.

Malon shivered. It had been a frightening phantasmagoria of night visions, specters of gloom mounded like books to be burned, enmeshed like tangled fishing nets, that had visited her. She wondered where the dreams had come from, why they had chosen _this _night to pile in upon her as though eager to drown her. Could dreams be malicious? They were not of the mind whom they visited, then, if they were. Did dreams wing from heaven on their own volition, or were they bestowed, as the stories often said, at the hands of faeries and goddesses and supernatural beings? Malon lay back against her pillow, fixing her eyes upon the ceiling and tracing it rough-hewn beams. If dreams were no product of the dreamer, but gifts and curses from those above, surely, dreams were messages, sent with a purpose.

A foreboding chill began to fill her stomach.

Perhaps her dreams were an admonition, a warning to shun the Fair Folk and their blandishments…

"Ah, so ye are awake! Ignoring me on purpose are ye?"

Cook was in the room before Malon fully understood the din of her footsteps on the stairs, a snarling she-bear who, for all her din, was the image of a starved crow. Thoughts tumbled from Malon's thoughts, and the girl started—Din above, how was it that she had not heard Cook thundering up the stairwell? She sprang from the bed.

"I'm sorry Miss Sharpe, I dinna hear ye call—" she began, blinking sleep crumbs as she began to make the bed. Her hands were practiced in the art, pulling, smoothing, straightening with blind dexterity. She was tucking in loose ends when Cook laid hold of her, dragged her over to the dresser, and began to roughly undress her.

"Faer the love of Nayru, e'en yer Papa's up an' dressed—I jes' served him the breakfast and sent that fool of a brother of mine outside to pack the wagon. And you chit, still lying in bed like the Din—forsaken—girl—ye—are!"

A series of impassioned yanks found Malon fully dressed a moment later, and having had no hand in the matter. She merely stood, a jerking victim to Cook's violence, and staggered to the mirror when Cook had done.

Moira had forced her into a straight white kirtle, symmetrically patterned about the hem and sleeves. She had adjusted Malon's yellow kerchief, placed it so that it enveloped the collar. The iron dragon's head hung like some dread ornament against the white fabric of the dress.

"And now..." Cook found a comb, picked it up, and brandished it like a mace at Malon's head. "Sae ye'll look like the daughter of a baron that ye are, an' not some country hick. Now, ge' over here, so I can do yer hair..."

Malon obeyed quickly—for when with Moira, alacrity was key—and set her teeth for the ordeal. Her head snapped every which way for the next few minutes, under Cook's merciless direction, and she wondered, as she often did on these unhappy occasions, why she kept forgetting to ask Eoin to chop off her waist length hair with his scythe.

Cook combed and braided, tore and twisted. Malon's hair was a red plaited roll atop her head, with two locks hanging by her ears, when she had done.

Malon rose from her chair, head throbbing with pain, and stumbled out the door and downstairs at Moira's "To yer breakast now, wench."

Malon ate alone. There was hash, sausage, milk, and a cold biscuit spread with cold butter. The smell of Cook's broth had grown stronger now, filling the room with a nauseating odor. Malon finished her breakfast, hastened outside with the remaining biscuit, and gulped lung-fuls of fresh air.

"Your boots, wench!" Moira bellowed suddenly from an open, upstairs window. Malon looked down. She hadn't realised she was barefoot. She returned her gaze to the thin figure of Cook, saw glinting in her hands a pair of new and miserably tight black boots.

"Can I wear my old boots Miss Sharpe?" Malon called, noticing the look of sadistic pleasure on Cook's face.

"No," Moira replied. "Yer o' noble standing, not a hussy. Take these." She tossed the new pair, glinting cruelly in the sunlight, down, and shut the window.

Malon caught them. "Hellfire," she muttered, and cramming the rest of the biscuit into her mouth, thrust her feet into them.

"My sister's quite the witch, eh?" said Eoin suddenly.

Malon started. The boots bit into her skin. "Din-forsaken rubbish!" she cried, and kicked a boot across the yard. She hadn't seen Eoin peering at her from around the side of the house.

"I'm sorry!" Eoin said, laughing, coming toward her. He held Malon's old boots in his hands. "I was inside, and heard my sister—I thought I'd show a bit o' kindness tae ye." He handed her the boots, and she took them gratefully.

"Thank ye Eoin!"

"Ye can w'ar 'em when ye leave here," he said, "but take the other ones with ye, sae Moira won' know. Ye shoul' put those on jes' before ye get home, and make a show o' taking them off inside the house." He grinned suddenly, and his long face became a radiant cone. "Won' tha' be fun?"

"Oh yes—" Malon's heartfelt agreement was suddenly interrupted by a deep, drawling bark from somewhere outside the ranch. Other such barks followed it, a chorus of hounds.

"Oh, wha's that?" Malon exclaimed.

"Ha'e ye forgotten? Conor's back." Eoin nodded behind him, eyelids narrowed in a distinct look of displeasure. "He's outside the ranch, with yer Pa. Ye heard the dogs."

"Aye." Malon grinned. "I think I hear his hound, Blue Bess. D'ye think she'll remember me?"

"Mayhap. Animals seem tae like ye. I doan think they'll ferget a friend sae soon."

"You think? I'm going tae say hello then."

"Tae Blue Bess?"

"To Conor, silly!"

"They're talking," said Eoin insinuatingly. "Conor an' Talon. Hi think Conor's givin' yer Pa news, though they'll be travelin' intae town together."

Malon dimpled. "Oh yes!" she exclaimed, with a lilting giggle. "And doan forget me!"

"Yer right detarmined tae goo with them, eh?"

"I sure am!" Malon replied. She winked, grinned as she spun around and stumbled in shoes not fully fitted upon her feet. "Call me when Papa is ready to leave," she ordered. "I'll be with Epona in the corral, eh?"

She ran off without waiting for an answer.

The corral lay half an acre from the house and byre, an easy walk and briefer run. Malon's progress kicked clouds of dust into the air, dust that spoke of parched afternoons, heat without alleviation, summers without rain. Malon was accustomed to the torrid climes of Hylian summers—in them, she had churned butter and milked cows, fed Cuckoos and groomed horses. It was not in the ranch livestock, however, to bear the heat with utmost resilience.

Though native to the Field, where temperatures wavered between the scalding heat of the Desert, and the mildness of the Forest, Hylian cattle had never developed to the point where they could make do, for long, upon the sparse, overcooked fare of summer grass. The sun was never kind to the grass in summer, and in summer, the grass was never kind to the ruminants. They subsisted upon hay in the summer months, and spent a great deal of their time within the byre. It was under the instruction of Talon that they did so; Talon, who ventured concern where he had no understanding.

Talon had never accustomed himself to the nuances of ranching—he had been apprenticed to a blacksmith in his youth, married to the Lady Rhiannon—a woman born to the trade of horses, cattle, and farm management—before he was fully aware of what marriage to a ranch baron might entail. People whispered, wondering that he did not balk due to ignorance of his wife's vocation, and hinted that there might have been a good deal more to the marriage than mutual affection, but the suspicion quickly died. It failed to curtail a universal liking many people felt for the blacksmith's apprentice and his strange wife (whom, it was said, vanished in her youth and was found several months later wandering the moor—but that was somehow justified, though no one could exactly recall how, and became the subject of harmless banter).

Talon, upon the death of his wife, was a young man still marked by traces of his master's forge. He had received the responsibility of his wife's ranch, which he had previously had no hand in running, with solemn face, and had sworn to cherish it as he had once cherished his wife. People wondered at his words. There was little trust to be spared for a young man, freshly burdened with the sole care of a seven-year-old daughter and ranch, and knowing next to nothing about his latter burden—it was a shame Lady Rhiannon had left the ranch to him. How would he manage its responsibility when a village bairn knew more of ranching than he? There was, of course, the steward, but he was an ancient curmudgeon who had loved his mistress with a prosaic love, and was naturally opposed to anyone else.

Talon had begun his undertaking industriously, evaluating the reasonableness of his dreams and hiring the hand Eoin, who, fortunately, had a sister, Moira, who would watch over house and daughter. But Talon had been young then, overly self-assured and fueled by his promise to his dead wife.

Things, from the first, did not gone as he intended. Dreams of fruits and vegetables, and an open-air market engraved with the Lon Lon name, had withered with the unfit soil, for the ideas of arable land and fallow fields were too great for Talon to grasp and implement. The steward was more contumacious that originally expected; nettled by Talon's methods, he had set up his own regime, and Talon grew furious. He fired the steward and threw his clothes out the window; he hired a man no good Hylian had ever heard of, a man who knew nothing of Talon or of his history or of his strange wife. That man was Ingo.

He'd found Ingo in a Market Town hiring fair. Ingo's written recommendations seemed sound, and he offered a fair understanding of the ranching trade—in that it sound official to Talon, and corresponded with Eoin's "wee bittie o' knowledge". Talon hired him and gave him the old steward's rooms; Ingo's possessions were few and threadbare, and Talon dressed him up in his old clothes.

In the beginning, it was a good thing Talon had had Ingo. Ingo was "grateful". He demonstrated his knowledge to a great extent; hired men and was the master of Hylian markets. His work and assessments were reliable, his methods hard, but strong. Talon soon took him for granted.

Had he not, things might have transpired differently. He might have interfered, when he saw the consequences of wage reductions or the hands' hatred for Ingo's occasional bouts of savagery toward them. But Talon was a jolly man, and jolly men are often blind. It was then that hands began to depart. They all said Ingo was a monster.

It might have been an exaggeration.

Malon came upon the corral in good time. An interminable wave of brown coats shimmered beneath the fountain of white sunlight; pausing, Malon watched them from between the shafts of the paddock. The horses shambled about as though on a Sunday stroll, a few making half-hearted attempts to play and tiring quickly in their endeavor. Others stood immobile, heads bowed, nosing the dry earth before they sprung their great heads upright and moved away. A cluster of foals rambled, like an errant group of town children gadding about in the square. And then there was the filly, with her coat of café au lait, and mane of alabaster, lying alone beneath an awning in an unobtrusive corner.

"Epona, _cronie_!" Malon grinned, slipping into the corral by way of a particularly wide gap that had yet to be mended. She ran through the field—across the forty square rods that lay between herself and the awning—and dove into the shade beside the little horse. "Guess what?" she chirped, hardly marking the fluster she had roused in the filly: the horse had half-risen, startled. "Papa says I may go with him intae town this day. What d'ye think o' that?"

Malon's liveliness was custom, but never anticipated, and so it was a moment before Epona resettled herself and gazed toward Malon. Her glance was the most somber among the horses, sloe-eyed and half-veiled by eyelashes. Malon stood, removed a brush that hung from a perilously unstable hook in the wall, and pointed like Damocles's sword over her head, and crouched beside the filly. She sat the brush on Epona's back, watched as the filly swung her head back to coolly watch her fellow steeds and their errant colts. Malon often brushed her, and the frequency had made the little creature complacent. She not longer deigned to watch the brush slip over her back and shoulders.

"Epona," Malon murmured, pressing a finger against the filly's neck. Epona had too often taken this moment for granted for Malon's pleasure.

Epona ignored her.

"Epona."

The filly's ears flickered.

"Epona! Will'na you not listen to me, lass?"

Even piteous gestures could not regain Epona's attention, when she was not inclined to give it.

Malon sighed, and ran the brush down the small of Epona's milky-brown back, along over her quivering withers. Sound was sparse upon the midmorning air; the birds had fled before the fingers of heat, taking with them the twittered songs that often accompanied the snuffling horses and grating shrieks from the cuckoo pen. But Malon was not at a loss, having sufficient resource from which she chose her diversions. She was fond of humming, if not very good, and so hummed now. It was an old, strange tune she had learned from her mother, one she had often jestingly used to harass Moira with, later in life. At its first strains, Epona turned her head, peeking beadily at Malon.

"D'ye like it then?" Malon asked, with a triumphant grin.

Epona huffed.

"Ye do, eh? Or no? I canna tell what your sayin', _cronie_."

Another huff, more pronounced that the first.

"I still donna get you," Malon mumbled, and began humming again. Epona paused, as though in consideration, but at last let the matter go, and returned to her observations. Girl and filly sat for some time.

Malon was not aware of Conor until he was nearly on top of her.

Epona had dismissed her several minutes before, wandering off to join the colts in play. Malon had replaced the brush and slipped from the corral, turning her steps in the direction of the barton. Even at this distance, she could clearly make out the flashes of white that vanished into a row of crates, which now filled the wagon bed—the milk, placed last evening into bottles, was being packed away. She ran over to watch.

Her father was nowhere in sight, and Eoin had but that moment stepped back into the byre, to fetch more bottles. Malon clambered into the wagon, squeezing into a break between the crates and wagon side just wide enough to accommodate her, and sat upon the chips of bark lying scattered on the bed floor. There were five crates in the wagon bed, another unopened on the ground. Malon pressed her body against the wagon wall and cast a hand over the rim. Flakes of rough-hewn wood were dislodged at the brush of her fingers, and went tumbling over the rim into invisibility.

She had not reclined long when circumstances, not for the first time that morning, took it upon themselves to startle her. A moist nose roughly forced itself into her limp, dangling hand, shoving it about before expectantly wriggling beneath it. A mellow heat enveloped Malon's palm, tinged with the soft bristles of a greyhound's trim head. Startled, Malon snatched back her hand and peered over the side.

"Oh, 'tis you, Blue Bess!" she exclaimed. "I wasna expecting you! How are you this day?" She reached down and obligingly began to cosset the hound's long, scarred muzzle. "You goin' with us intae town?" she asked, running her fingers over the dog's head. Bess lifted her ears, and gave Malon a long, imperious look. 

The look was momentarily transferred to the back of the wagon; Malon, with a little yelp, only just managed to drag her feet to safety as the final crate was thrust into the bed.

"Watch out faer Din's sake; didn't ye see Laird Talon's daughter's back there?" Eoin had materialized, glowering, his broad hands filled with a bottle apiece. Malon cast her startled glance toward his auditor.

It was Conor McKnall, a discovery that was not unexpected—carelessness, as had been lately displayed, could often be attributed to him.

Malon stared, lost as to what emotion should well in her, if indeed the scene required emotion. She was accustomed to the apathy of her father's friend, but it was with reluctance that she did so. Truth be told, she could rarely fathom Conor.

Conor glanced at Eoin, not deigning, even for a moment, to look at her. "You think I would crush her?" he asked, smiling flippantly.

"Of course he wouldn't!" Malon reassured Eoin, hurriedly folding herself into the now smaller gap and scrambling onto her knees.

"Your anxieties are almost funny, Eoin," Conor continued, as though he had not heard Malon.

"You could've broken the box," Eoin retorted, "throwing it in there."

"Ah, _lad_, ye need not werk yersel' into a fit onna account o' my crate handling!" Conor winked, laid a languid palm upon the floor of the bed and leaned forward. His arm was taut beneath his weight, veined and built like stone. Malon gaped. Had she been possessed of the means to see herself, she might have wondered exactly _why _her jaw took it upon itself to unhinge.

Conor straightened, for he was hard put to remain still. He clicked his tongue at Blue Bess, never once taking his eyes from Eoin, whom he regarded with a strange grin twisting his features. Proportionally, Conor was the height of excellence—golden-complexioned, fair, rakish—to be brief, Adonis was but another man, set next to Conor—and yet, when he smiled, Conor immediately stripped his face of its goddess-given splendor, turned it into a pond of lined flesh that was neither old nor merry—the lines were misshapen, as though cords bound his face, pulling his upper lip and eyebrows out of line.

Blue Bess heeded his unspoken command, came gliding out of Malon's reach to sit at Conor's feet, and turned her amber-eyed gaze upon Eoin. Malon looked from the twosome of man and dog to the ranch hand. Eoin looked distinctly uncomfortable.

He shook his head after a moment, and the ill-at-ease expression vanished; tawny head low, he brushed past Conor and Bess and loaded the bottles.

"Do ye want to help me?" he asked, returning to the door of the byre and fixing Malon with a meaningful look.

"No, not in particular," Malon said, refusing to understand the glance.

His brow furrowed. "But—" he began.

"Conor! Eoin! The wagon loaded there?"

Talon was suddenly upon them, among them, his face a wreath of merriness, of smiles, of sunshine. Eoin pulled back into the byre and Conor's apathy vanished; he stepped boldly up to Talon, grinning, full of conversation. An involuntary grimace tugged at Malon's countenance as she watched him smiling, there—she had always found it strange to mark Conor's utter hold over her father. It was not necessarily a _bad _thing, she told herself, only a bit odd that Conor, so rarely upon the ranch, should have the power to rouse her father's latent energies so dramatically. It was a feat no one else had yet managed to accomplish, for though Talon was a jolly man, he was a private one, whose inward soul remained inaccessible to the world.

Sometimes Malon saw a spirit in him that not even her mother had drawn out, when Talon was in the company of Conor.

But then again, this was Conor—tall, handsome, well-proportioned, running like the god Mercury when at the head of his charges, the royal greyhounds, the finest of Hyrule's dogs…

Perhaps she gave him too many qualities. She could never be sure.

The final crate was loaded at last, and Eoin saw them off. Malon waved to him from the wagon bed, an arm upon Blue Bess, who had made a seat for herself among the crates. It would be a little time before they reached the Market, though the pace was quicker than usual—an impatient duo of horses carted the wagon.

Conor McKnall was a man whom "had a way with people", as both his supporters and detractors put it. He hailed from Kakariko Village, as did all the suave youth of Hyrule, and had come south to the Lon Lon Ranch in search of a job, a boy of seventeen unable to stay at rest long enough to be apprenticed in a more or less "stationary" vocation.

He had not been suited to the ranch, but Talon had loved his boyish arrogance and cavalier manner. He was a boy after Talon's own heart, Moira had said, without an explanation as to the particulars surrounding this circumstance. Malon remembered Conor's appearance vividly: he had one day showed up at the ranch with tales regarding an invalid mother back in Kakariko.

Talon had hired Conor.

Ingo was offended, for his voice was raised in protest—Conor lacked something, and would not contribute to the running of the ranch, and besides, it was _he_, Ingo, who hired men, not Talon—Talon merely provided the money with which to pay the wages. This had been a mistake on Ingo's part, and Talon resolved to have Conor within the ranch. Talon overrode Ingo's protestations, and for once was the master.

Once hired, Conor had been given laughable tasks of superficial importance. He emulated the rest of the ranch labourers, in that he did not care for Ingo, but took his disdain further, and added to it flippancy and relentless badinage. Talon found this trait hilarious. Ingo, as expected, was further offended, and the atmosphere betwixt the master and his steward was often strained when McKnall stood hubristically in their midst. When he was eighteen, Conor left the ranch without so much as a "by your leave", and took up residence in the royal kennels.

"He must've known someone, to have gotten the position so easily," Moira had muttered.

Conor's audacity had impressed itself upon Malon, when she was small, and the impression had remained with her. When Moira grumbled over Conor's tales, and wondered aloud how "a big boy such as he managed to keep his poor, sick mum when he hadn't a penchant faer work" Malon ignored her. She had once adored Conor with the fleeting puppy love of childhood that, in its time, appears indelible—he made her darling papa happy, and was therefore good. She admitted, at times, that she found his smile, and the antagonism he stirred between her father and Ingo, discomfiting. But did that truly matter? Oh sweet, blessed infatuation, _could _it matter?

She knew she verged upon insanity when she thought this way. But Malon thrived upon romance; everything was beautiful in exaggeration. Her viscera no longer came loose whenever she saw him, but she clung to her childish love. She had learned to cling to romantic conceits, those ideas that she loved where she didn't, because it gave her stomach a pleasant twinge when she thought of it. It was lovely, besides, to clasp this delirious illusion. Illusions—oh, she how loved the glamour of illusions!

It was a nice day for a ride. The air was breathless, noiseless with the exception of the conversation unraveling above her head, between Conor and Talon. It was a stillness that wavered on the fragile borderlines of fresh morning and the wild heat of noontide, into which the day would soon pass.

The air was alive, and Malon, absently petting Blue Bess with eyes shut, and her face turned to the unremitting sun, sank away, out of the rush of the mortal world into the timeless realms of imagination. How like the winsome spreads of Fairyland was the Field, when considered in a special way!

_But leave the Field, and come beneath the Hill, where the faeries live, where the earth on which the southern harebell stirs is dark and rich and carpeted with the sweetest grass, where ribbons of dayflower and evening primrose flourish. Come, and watch the rivers wind into emptiness, where once a boy wept, his hands covered in blood, and a Kelpie danced, a mortal man struggling to reach her reigns. Stay here, with us, beloved machree, stay here and you will see her again, she whom you called mother..._

"Farore's _blood_, we're here at last!"

Malon jumped. The bump of earth beneath the wagon wheels had suddenly became a joggling rumble. She gasped, rubbing her heavy eyes as she sat up. Blue Bess, tall and sedate, was looking dryly at her.

"Aye, here at last!" Talon concurred.

"By Din, an' I though these horses had a bittie o' speed on them," Conor continued. "'Tis high noon already, an' hot as hell..."

The observance made, Malon suddenly became aware of the heat, and the stickiness of her clothes.

"I ha'en't been tae town in a long while," Talon was saying. "Hi may rent a room, and spend a little time roun'bout here." He glanced back at Malon for the first time since they'd left the ranch. "What d'ye say tae that little lass?"

"Oh yes! Yes!" Malon cried. She had never been in the rented room of an inn before.

She had half-hoped Conor would turn around in his seat and smile at her, but he kept his eyes obliviously forward.

Talon paused the wagon just inside the massive arch of the grey wall. There was a gatehouse here, and its keeper hung restlessly out the window, the gold-coloured basinet of the Hylian soldiers gone from his head, and the light pieces of armour he wore glittering in the sunshine.

"Mornin'!" said Talon, with a wave of his large, hairy hand.

"Likewise, Laird Talon," said the gatekeeper, his tone thick and lazy with the heat. His accent was that of northern Hyrule, fastidiously avoidant of the burrs and negligent vernacular of the speech common to the southern and central parts of the land. "Business?" Everything about him was sarcastic and dry.

"We're deliverin' milk up tae the castle," said Conor smugly. "Gi'e us admittance posthaste, ye knave."

The gatekeeper looked up at him through half-slit eyelids. "You're big now, Conor," he said, "but just wait a bit, when you're besotted and seated at the card table. _Then _we'll see." He gave a sharp, dry laugh. "But never mind; it's good to see you here, in town. How long has it been?" he directed his question toward Talon. Malon wondered how he knew her father.

"A few months 'r' so, I think," Talon replied, with a grin.

The gatekeeper gave a small smile. "No doubt about that," he said, and then waved them aside. "Go on in, I had no intention to keep you sitting here."

"We'll be here faer the rest o' the day!" Conor shouted back. "Twen'y o'clock, 'roun' at Dinah's place, eh?"

"Aye!" the gatekeeper called back. And then he turned, and took up, once more, his sluggish watch.

"Now me lad, I'm hopin' ye ain' planning anything wild this night," said Talon, in a mockingly authoritative tone. Conor settled back in his seat, smirking.

"Oh, _nay _Maister Talon," he said. "I wouldna dare."

Malon, a specter privy to their discussion, wondered if she should be awed or repelled. The jaded ease with which Conor took things was remarkable to her. She had once heard Cook call Conor McKnall amoral, and from this show of his offhand views, she began to wonder if perhaps Cook was correct after all.

The wagon lumbered through a row of stacked houses into the main square, and here Malon was formally introduced to the Market.

It was as though the world had gathered in this agora and dished out its most strident noises. Domestic clamor vied with the public noise, and together, the combined din wove itself into the clamor of conversation. The wagon dipped and sprung about as the wheels rumbled over the rough cobblestone, and the clap of the horses' hooves against the street was lost in the commotion. It was all so frightfully discordant, and everything so huge. Malon felt her hand grow heavy on Blue Bess's trim head, as she stared about her and wondered.

Individuals had melded into something that hardly resembled humanity around the food stalls, plump elbows and baskets sticking into the body of the person beside them. The angry strains of haggling were audible, rising and falling with the rambunctious shouts of men, women, and street urchins. Animals moved through the streets with their caretakers either astride their broad backs or clomping by their sides. The entire market bustled, like a swarm of multi-coloured beetles crawling along the leaves of poor vegetation. Malon was intimidated by it all.

Talon pulled the cart horses to a halt before a two-story building. It protruded from a wall of tall housing, with letters etched into its brow.

"McCutcheon's Inn," Malon murmured. "Market Town's Sterling Accommodations for Wayfarers."

"I'll goo an' get us a room, eh Mallie, lass?" said Talon, smiling at Malon as he clambered down from the bench.

"Canna come in with you?" she asked, standing. Her legs ached, and trembled beneath her. Blue Bess stirred, and rose with majestic grace.

"Course ye can, me lass..." Talon drifted off in an absent-minded way, and Malon followed him.

Father and daughter entered the inn, and Malon sat on a bench, as Talon went up to the desk. The foyer was lovely, cool and delicious, a tapestried palace of richly-dressed benches and false marble tables. Malon leaned back, watching the scene outside the single window, before glancing toward the front desk, where a man in a cream-yellow apron bantered with her father, wiping his big, flour-dusted hands.

There was a narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper floor, stairs enclosed by lacquered walls and a shining banister. Malon could just spot the wake left by a cleaning rag on the banister's gleaming surface. She looked down at her boots, and noted how dirty and unkempt they appeared, swinging over the sheen of the floor.

"Malon, lass—"

She stood at her papa's beckoning, and went over to him. The laughing innkeeper had retreated back into the kitchen, still wringing his hands on the cream-coloured apron, a pocket bulging with a satchel of Talon's glittering rupees. Father and daughter mounted the stairs, and began their ascent to their room. "The place is a bit expensive," said Talon, huffing, gripping the banister in his big, red hand like a hiking staff. "Buit I doan gi'e half a rupee, ha ha..."

"Oh," said Malon.

They gained the top and went down the hall, walked till they came to a door. "This be ours," Talon said. He nodded at the number 19 embossed in the mahogany door, his chest heaving as he huffed from their climb. He fiddled with the key, inserted it into the keyhole, and pushed open the door. "Here we go..." He entered, turned, and ushered his daughter into the interior with an arm thrust out invitingly. She entered; he stood with arms akimbo looking about the room.

"A lovely room, ain' it?" he asked proudly.

"So it is!" Malon cried. It was snug and filled with blue tile upon the walls, sweet, fresh rushes upon the floor. "It'll be nice tae stay here," she said, turning to beam up at her father.

He smiled down at her. "I thought ye would like it. Now..." He held out the key, and she took it with a look of surprise. "Here's yer key—I ha'e me own—jes' in case ye'd like to go explorin' a bit on yer own..."

She frowned at the key. "On my own?"

"Aye lass—ye've been cooped up in the house faer sae long, an' Moira couldna been much fun—"

"You're going away?"

Talon flushed self-consciously. "Aye—buit jes' faer a short while. Conor an' I'll take the milk up tae the castle, an' then I'll be right back—"

_Her papa stood in the doorway, framed by mid-morning sunshine, dressed in his nice clothing, shod in the big boots he wore on nice days. "I'll be back inna little while me lass—" He now knelt, and she stood smiling before him, with her doll in her arms... Moira was in the background, a stern, noiseless specter, presiding over father's mendacity and child's naïve belief. "I'll be back in a little while," Talon said. "I'm off tae Kakariko, to deliver milk—I'll be gone only a few hours, an' then I'll be back." Malon smiled—she always smiled—she clutched her doll, she wondered if Papa would be gone all night like last time. But that was all right, because he always came home the next morning, though Miss Sharpe said he was never in a mood to be spoken to, and so Malon would watch her papa from dark corners, as he languished with putrid gut and quaffed mead._

_That had been after Mama died._

Malon suddenly remembered her father was talking to her, and gave him her attention with difficulty, her eyes glazed by the recollection. She smiled at him, and said that was all right, she didn't mind. Yes, yes, she would get out, look around... He was gone, and she couldn't remember saying goodbye.

Malon sat on the bed, the key in her hands, staring at the wall. The wish was still there, that she might accompany her papa through the castle gates, and help deliver the milk, but subconsciously she knew that while Conor, a man, a man after her father's own heart, a man who could drink and carouse and tell jokes and rouse women, was around, no dream of her's could be fulfilled._  
_

_Oh Conor, Conor… such _power _ye ha'e!_

She didn't know how long she stared at the wall. A few minutes—half an hour—an hour—many hours... She couldn't remember when her body turned cold, and she lost the ability to stand, and neither could she remember when she regained that sensibility, and stood in a haze. The key had left her hands, and lay golden and glinting on the floor. She snatched it up, slipped it into a pocket, turned toward the door. The room was suddenly airless, too real to be real, and all her sensations were heightened and hyper-realistic—she wanted to be dulled down, to sink once more into the insensibility of the mundane...

Outside. She would go outside.  



	6. The Fairy's Task

**Chapter 6 – The Fairy's Task**

The river began in Death Mountain, and was called the Cerulean.

It flowed down from the peaks and into the burnt foothills, and from there cut through the highlands, a rushing and roaring borderline between the Field and Kakariko. The river grew shallow in these parts, where the sandbars rose and the water chilled the shins of village maidens. The banks here rose, and sloped further down, into a brae, where a plateau jutted over the water.

Just past the cliff, the water deepened, and the further down one went, the deeper it became, till its azure shade was transformed into a deep and treacherous blue. Here the Cerulean curved, and disappeared into a high and narrow pair of escarpments, and the subsequent Zora Valley, to join the muted roars of several watercourses and their tributaries, all pooling into a swirling confluence few men had ever seen.

It was difficult to navigate the Cerulean past the bend, where the eddies were as vicious as Charybdis, swallowing the intrepid and ingurgitating them days later, dead and bloated, in strange places. There was no going by land either, as the ground ended at the escarpments and gave way to the vicious river on both the highland and Kakariko sides. It was as though nature had no wish for Zora Valley, and whatever lay beyond, to be discovered by the desecrating hands of man. She did well in keeping its secrets.

The little boy had not bothered with the mysterious escarpments, or even the land extending beyond the cliff and brae. He had merely looked at the yawning, horizontal chasm through a glimmering sheen of tears, before slipping down the bank and into the water. He was already damp with sweat, and the water pulled at the bottle-green fabric of his tunic, soiled with dried stains of blood.

The boy was washing his hands meticulously, scrubbing with broken nails his florid palms, before letting the water run over them for a moment or two. His face was dirty, streaked with dry soil and the yellowing paths of tears, and the expression in his eyes was dead, as though he were unnaturally tired.

"You washed your hands already Link," said a voice above him. "Last night. Her blood's all gone..."

The little boy continued to wash mechanically, not even looking around at the voice, or down at his work. The palms and backs of his hands were indeed lined, white marks on one side, bumpy red furrows on the other, as though the boy had nearly gouged himself during the nocturnal washing.

"Link!" said the voice sharply. "Link, stop it now!"

The boy paused. The water gurgled over his shins.

His hands fell.

"Wash your face now," commanded the voice, less harshly than before. "If you're going to see the princess, I suppose clean features are a prerequisite..."

The boy remained stationary.

"Well?" said the voice, after a moment. "Don't be so obstinate!"

The boy obeyed.

As he lifted his cupped hands, dripping with water, the high-toned bark of a greyhound suddenly broke the morning air. He started, springing to his feet like a startled doe.

"Don't worry," the voice assured him. "It's not close. The dog." A pause. "You don't know what dogs are, do you?"

Link glanced around at last—his eyes were less numb. For a moment, there was a glimmer of sphere-shaped, iridescent light defying the bright, slanting shades of morning, as though a star were flitting on gauzy wings about him. The boy slowly shook his head, and the voice continued, "They're like wolves... except... different."

Another pause.

"I think we should head on down to the castle now," the voice said finally.

The boy gave no gesture of assent, merely turned toward the towering wall of the Market, and the limp pennants of the castle beyond.

And so passed the morning.

Blue Bess rose when Malon emerged from the inn, wagging her sleek and imposing tail in welcome. "Ye decided to stay an' accompany me, eh girl?" Malon said, running her fingers along the dog's small head. "I thank ye." Blue Bess watched her unblinkingly.

"We'll go an' see the sights then, no?" Malon smiled, looking from her companion to the teeming streets. "Papa left me money—forty rupees—and I suppose we mun' go and treat ourselves. I'm thirsty—you? D'ya see that distant stall, back there? Where the lady in blue is standing? They're selling orgeats, I think. Cook ne'er let me have one—but I shall have one now."

Having outlined her purpose, more for the benefit of herself than the dog, Malon started off. Blue Bess trailed after her.

Orgeats, indeed, were being sold from beneath the hooded front of the stand. They were not as cold as touted, for the sun had worked unwished-for wonders upon the frosted sides of the glass bottles, but Malon purchased half a quart anyhow. What ice that remained cooled her throat, and she discovered, with a gasp of pleasure, that sugar had been added to the regular infusion of orange flower water and almonds.

"It's a shame ye canna have one Bess," Malon said, as they left the stall.

Blue Bess ignored her.

The Market offered much in the way of sightseeing—there were bazaars, and a public oven to which the penniless women took their bread; a myriad of specialty shops, set deep in the corners of the town, and an assortment of vendors, hawking their wares. Had vision been stolen from her, however, Malon's excursion would have been fruitful, nonetheless, for smells abounded. Loaves, draped in a haze of steam, threw their crisp, buttered scent upon the air, and there amid the smell of pastry wafted scents of fabric, animals, spices. Voices lost their distinction where the cart rumbled and the hoof tapped the cobbles. But now and again, words came unsullied to Malon's ears. It was not long before she was aware of an ubiquitous topic, and grew curious.

"There are Gerudo in town," said a man, his tone deliberately casual.

Malon knew the tone's implications: Eoin had often taken such a voice with her. She paused, stared without qualm up at the man. He was tall, hairless, and froth-pale, and the front of his green jerkin was stained black with sweat. His auditors came and went like the passing of the tide, though two clung to his words as though caught in a reef—an old, be-shawled woman and a lady in blue.

"Surely they're not _here_, in the Market?" said the woman in blue. Her drawn visage lent her every expression a shade of horror.

"Of course not... they aren't _that_ mad," scoffed the man.

"The king would lift his protection if they _were_," said the old woman.

"I don't think so."

"And why not?"

"Their king is to be married to the princess."

The man had anticipated the shock of his words distinctly: a gasp fled the woman in blue, leaving the orifice from which it had made its escape hanging open; and the old woman started, her pale, wrinkled eyelids flying momentarily open to reveal eyes that were off- center.

"Isn't that _madness_?" said the old woman.

"Quite so," said the man, unperturbed by the reaction his words had caused. "When we saw him, Lord Ganondorf, riding through here with his half-naked entourage, that's what we asked ourselves."

He did not elaborate as to the "we". The women took it for granted.

"Where have you been, that you didn't see him?" the man demanded.

"I've been round abouts, but I never heard such a tale," said the woman in blue, now quite scandalized of expression.

"I heard he and the king were going hunting today," said the man.

"They're rather chummy," said the old woman, no longer shocked.

"Quite."

"Poor Princess Zelda!" moaned the woman in blue. "To have to marry a barbarian, and an infidel too!"

"The Gerudo are the final frontier," the old woman retorted. "They've resisted making peace with us even after the Wars ended, and it is only because a half-sensible leader rose to their throne that anything good is happening now."

"Good?" The woman in blue continued to moan. "What good can come of marrying a _barbarian_?"

"There's a great deal more to this world than _your_ experiences, Joanna."

"I never said I—"

"Be quiet."

"No one knows what the princess thinks about the arrangement," interposed the man.

"She's shocked, of course!" gasped the woman in blue.

"She'll do what her father says," snapped the old woman.

"Poor princess!" cried the woman in blue.

Things were growing pathetic, and Malon moved, unobserved, back into the crowd. What she had heard, however, was something to mull over. She knew the princess was young, perhaps twelve—indeed, how _scandalous_ that she should be married to a Gerudo, a barbarian, an infidel! Malon pitied the princess with a compassion built upon theory and hearsay: the princess, her court, and her castle were but a background tapestry in Malon's cloistered existence, merely another Fairyland with turrets rising high behind the grey stone of the market town wall, into a sky dyed coral and lavender by the sunrise. But pity, howsoever it came into existence, was pity, and if Malon did not have enough experience to genuinely feel for the princess, she did pity her with a child's tenderness—that was enough.

There were thirty-four rupees left in Malon's possession, and with them, she bought things, extravagantly. Her acquisitions, and the process of obtaining them, did, for a while, cast forgetfulness over the memory of her papa's departure. She finished the orgeat and bought another, warmer this time, but still viciously pleasing. Cook had never approved of sweet things, and rarely allowed Malon any. But now Malon had her revenge. It was as sweet as ever she could have dreamed.

It at first hardly troubled her that little of the thirteen o'clock sky could be seen. She looked up, and saw the gray buildings, the lines of laundry, the buxom housewives tossing soiled water out onto the alleyway cobblestones.

But the closeness and the heat weighed in as though to seal her upon all sides by both, and Malon's pleasure could not last in this inferno; soon gave way to distaste. She was imprisoned, trapped, alone—she had attempted to elude her fates, but Fate had played its cards well. Her orgeat was gone, her purchases suddenly cumbersome.

Malon made her way into the square, where there was a chance of respite, and sat with her back against the crouching, chiseled statue planted there. Her superficial joy was at last vanquished by the heat, leaving the bitter dregs of galled feeling, and an escalating desire to escape.

"Ye find this town tae yer liking?" she asked Blue Bess, watching the greyhound seat herself and survey the throngs critically. "I don't, not exactly..."

She sank into silence, and gave herself to the commotion, her hands in her lap, covering the knickknacks.

There was a little girl in the wide square, garbed in a green dress and white pinafore, running, laughing, the bare soles of her feet a dirt-caked blur as she chased after an errant cuckoo. Malon watched her, and knew the girl's endeavours were futile, in a way. Malon herself had chased cuckoos, and if a cuckoo had no intention of being caught, there was really nothing you could do about it. She watched the girl and the girl continued to run, and then there passed a band of people, crowding Malon's line of vision. The little girl was hidden from her view, borne by the crowd into oblivion. Malon frowned, shifting a little.

The crowd unfolded.

It thinned out like boiling spume along a strip of beach into a long line of arbitrary townsfolk. They talked and gestured, small knots gathering about the stands. The little girl had disappeared, her joyous laughter dispersed upon the air. In her place stood someone Malon had not noticed before, a little boy, dressed in green, with what looked like the hilt of a sword peeking above his left shoulder. Malon stared at him. She saw only the green, forest-tinged folds lying slightly worn against his lean figure. And then, at length, she took note of his face, and the lonely, aimless expression darkening it. It was as though he were unsure of his surroundings, and had embarked without preparation into the town. He now stood lost, forlorn...

"Faery Boy," she breathed.

The boy stared about him, rocking back and forth on his heels. He cringed occasionally, as though intimidated by the press of persons whom at times passed too closely to the invisible sphere in which he stood. Malon tilted her head inquisitively. The boy was an aberration. The cut of his clothes was different, the skirt of his tunic reaching to his knees. He wore neither hose nor trousers, and his skin blazed golden-brown beneath the richness of the sun. He began to walk, his course rambling, and every now and then put a hand to the green, stocking-like cap he wore with convulsive gesture, as though he felt for something nestled beneath its stuffy protection. Malon rose as he neared, slipping the baubles into her pockets as she did. Blue Bess stirred beside her, and lifted her head.

"Hello," Malon said.

Her voice was clear, carried well; the boy started, and found her gaze. Malon smiled—smiles always made good first impressions, Eoin had once said—and gazed unblinkingly at her auditor. "I doan believe I've seen ye around here a'fore."

He promptly dropped his gaze.

Malon was oblivious to this demure expression laughing as she considered her words. "Actually," she continued, "I'm not here in town much myself... buit I mean... well... yer clothing's different. The cut an' all. Are you from 'round here?"

"No," he said, raising his eyes, fumbling for her gaze yet again. "No, I'm not from 'round here."

Malon frowned. "Ye're not?" she said, amicably. "Well then..." Her frown deepened; gamesome concentration played across her brow. "Mayhap," she said, "mayhap ye are fraem the forest! Kokiri!"

Her intent had been facetious.

The boy's eyes widened, and a look of pure joy came to his face. He began to nod, wildly, epileptically. "How did you know?" he asked. "How did you know?"

Malon's face crumpled, and her viscera clenched. "The forest?" she asked. "Ye really do hail fraem the forest?"

"Yes, yes!"

"But..." She could feel the colour draining from her face. "But no one lives in the forest."

The smile faded from his face.

"What do you mean?" he cried. "Of course they do... I did, and..." He drifted off, gave her an odd, perplexed look. "The bigger people said that too," he murmured, after a moment. "They said the forest is dead, for all they were concerned."

The children stood there gazing at each other, confounded and unsure of the other.

One moment passed, and took many with them, and still the children stared at one another. Words languished, inarticulate and yet unwilling to die unspoken, and so the two were forced to content themselves with a mutual examination, as they sought words to end the awkward minute. The boy had a nice voice, Malon decided, low and sweet, and populated with handsome burrs—and he was rather fine of feature. His face began with a bright pair of eyes boldly painted in hues of blue; a placid mouth finished his visage, one that seemed ill suited to vivid emotion. His nose was red at the tip, his chin gently tapering, his brow wide and seamless, his cheekbones round and slimming with the presence of waning youth. He was on the slender side of things, approximately her height, childishly graceful in his bearing, and wore a knife-sized sword, which hung from a worn scabbard lashed to his back, behind a small, wooden shield, which was dabbed with a cryptic, red design.

"Do you know," he asked, abruptly, "where Hyrule Castle is?"

Malon started, hastened to regain her composure, and answered cheerfully,

"I've only been there once, but I was with my mother, and we waited at the gate, so I suppose that doesn't count much." She smiled again, and her smile was thoughtful, disarming, simplistic. "Would ye like tae walk over there? We can look at it through the gate. I'm sure the guards won' mind."

"There are guards?" he exclaimed

Her eyebrows rose. "O' course," she rejoined. "'Tis the home o' the royal family after all; they mus' ha'e the best security they can get."

"Oh," said the boy.

"We'll goo an' look at it," Malon continued. "Come awa..." She made a clicking sound with her tongue and Blue Bess arose, like some blasé Aphrodite surfacing in a shower of dewdrops. The little boy recoiled as she stood, and Malon giggled. "Doan worry!" she cried. "Blue Bess is harmless."

His gaze went first to her, then drifted back to the dog. "Oh..." he murmured, and slowly uncoiled. "Oh."

They set off.

Malon walked in a state of perplexity, glancing at her companion every now and then. _No one lives in Kokiri Forest_, she thought. _No one... no one but the plants that canna survive in the heat of the open, and the wild animals, the birds ye don' espy upon the Field, an' the faeries... _

Why was it that her mind always caught upon the notion of the faeries?

She shook her head as though to clear it. There were times when her thoughts neglected the faeries, when satisfaction was hers and such whimsical contemplation stole precious moments from activity. But there were also times when she lay in bed and wished the faeries would spirit her away, like they did in Mama's tales. And now a boy stood beside her, a boy who drove the idea of _them_ into mind.

He was nervous, she marked, excessively so. His eyes were wide and staring, timidly waatching his surroundings. Though he seemed inclined to examine the town, he shrank aside whenever an adult looked toward them, fixed his eyes upon the ground till they had passed the object of his discomfort.

"What brings ye north?" Malon asked at last.

He glanced shyly at her. "I, ehm... want... ehm... need... I'm off tae see the princess."

Malon raised her eyebrows. "Really?" she asked, in a voice that wavered between belief and doubt. "Ye're off tae see the princess?"

"Yes."

"Ye're allowed?"

"Am I?"

She shrugged. "I ha'en't any idea. Do ye ha'e official permission?"

"I doan think so."

"Then I'm not sure if you can see the princess." Malon shrugged again. "Papa always said ye need official permission tae get in through the gates. An' I couldna imagine what ye might require tae get an interview with the royal family..."

The boy's face spoke unhappiness, as he listened to her conjectures and trudged by her side. Seeing the dampening affect of her words, Malon said quickly, "Buit I'm sure ye'll find a way. Eoin, a hand at my papa's ranch, says that if ye canna find a way, ye mus' make one. Perhaps they sha' let ye in..."

She drifted off. The boy smiled at her, but the smile was perfunctory and did not reach his eyes. It was a smile, she thought, dragged out for the sole purpose of acknowledging her conversation. She stopped speaking. They walked on.

Malon smarted, for a moment, beneath the blow of the boy's obligatory smile, and was ashamed of the warmth in her tone. She liked this boy; it boded ill to drive him from her with an excess of speech when they had barely been acquainted. She made a hasty vow—_guard yaer tongue, Malon—it may be discomfiting!­­_—but forgot her inhibiting twinges some minutes later: she was not accustomed to shame.

Malon told him of her papa, and the ranch, and the _errand_, as she referred to it as, which had brought her to the town, and while the boy did not speak, he looked at her in a manner than encouraged her speech. As the bustle of the town lessened, and they neared the road toward the castle, the little boy was acquainted with a substantial quarter of Malon's life upon the ranch. As they passed the final mass of stacked domiciles, domestic living gave way to the towering cliffs of the escarpment that formed the wall-like border of the road. Peeking along the cliff could be seen the fertile vegetation of the tablelands above, gazing down upon the children like languid nymphs, draping their long, verdant arms along the sides of their couch, and paling in the sunshine. It was here, on the road, that Malon again saw the sun, and in that instant she felt the abnormal closeness of the town, gave a small cry of relief to see the sun of her papa's ranch once more above her, and to be rid of the market's closeting effect. The boy looked at her, startled, and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing..." She smiled, and looked up toward the sky, ecstatic with the fading, fifteen o'clock heat. "It's just... I can see the sun again!"

She glanced at him, and saw he too smiled, and though it was small, numb smile, she noticed, this time, that the rich cobalt of his irises glittered a little, and he said, "Aye. The sun is nice." He paused. "Ye couldna really feel it back in Kokiri, with the trees an' all... but it is nice." He stopped speaking, and she grinned. He knew—he understood—what it was like to feel again the sun! and this knowledge made her heart pound with cheer and a slight, amicable love for him.

They came to the gate, a sound, black iron structure darkening beneath the softening, celestial rays, hidden by the gentle bends in the road from immediate sight. A guard stood before it, straight and golden in his uniform, clutching a spear, and gazing at the world through a heavy casque. The gilt visor was pulled low over his eyes.

He surveyed Link and Malon from the shadows of his helmet. "Hello," he said, in a straight, golden tone.

"Hello, sir," Malon said, starting to bob back and forth on the rounded soles of her feet.

"Business?" asked the guard.

The boy started, and hastily said, "I... I'm here tae see the princess."

"The princess..." said the guard. He cocked his head, and made a sound, as though he were amused. "Do you have official permission?" he asked. "Summons, perhaps?"

"N-no."

"Then I am afraid you cannot enter." The guard seemed to straighten, as though he had been leaning forward to hear the little faery boy's request. "You must have official permission before entering through these gates. Good afternoon."

He turned his straight, golden gaze down the road, and so did not see the consternation upon the faery boy's face. "But—but—!" the boy protested. "I must see the princess! Please, let me in!"

"You must have official business." The guard did not even deign to look at them this time. "Good afternoon."

"Bu—"

"Good afternoon."

"Can we at least look at the castle grounds fraem the gate sir?" Malon asked, and felt brazen with each word.

"It would not be fitting for youth such as yourselves to be seen loitering about the gate. You must either have official permission, or go. Seeing as you do not have the former, you must do the latter. Good afternoon." His words were almost mechanical.

"Well, then, I see we canna argue..." She took the arm of the boy. "Come along then." He obeyed, and offered no resistance, but looked back at the guard with an expression of bemusement on his strange, tawny face. They rounded a bend in the cliff-like wall, and the guard was whisked from view.

There was nothing now that they could do. "Perhaps," said Malon, and released the boy's arm, though he did not seem to notice her hand on it in the first place, "perhaps we can wait in the inn, in the town, faer my papa. He haus official permission, an' perhaps he can get ye in. What d'ye say to that? Much better'n nagging an unyielding guard, eh? A guard who thinks ye need _official permission_ to stand at the gate."

The boy smiled at her attempts at humour, and nodded in mute acquiescence to her suggestion. They went back to town, and into the foyer of the inn, leaving Blue Bess outside, and sat down to wait Talon's arrival.

And so they waited.

Fifteen o'clock gradually sank into sixteen, and then seventeen o'clock, then eighteen, nineteen, twenty. As the bells began to ring for twenty-one, Malon's world began to blur and fade. Her eyelids and mind grew heavy, and the tranquility of the inn hypnagogic. She and the boy sat side by side on the opulent bench, he staring unblinkingly past the wall behind the front desk and she nodding off, as though the room were strewn with poppies, and the bobbing yellow heads entwined in her hair...

Time lost its established distinctions, and was marked, now, by flickers of movement, whispers of sound, the Faery Boy starting and glancing at her sideways. She was partially unconscious, and could not summon the energy to smile or even look fully at him, and she saw him carefully remove his hat, and something like a sphere of light flit from it. But she assumed what she saw was only a figment of her drowsy mind, and she closed her eyes and slept.

A rough, hairy hand shook her into wakefulness. Her eyes flew open, and Malon found herself face to face with the sleek, mustachioed visage of the innkeeper.

"I canna ha'e a lad and lass like yerselles asleep in my foyer," he said, straightening and beckoning to her. "Off tae yer rooms now."

"I ha'en't a room," said the boy mechanically.

Malon sat up, dizzy and tangled in the heavy folds of sleep. She turned to the boy frantically, with the frenzied drowsiness of the half-awake.

"Where sha' ye stay? Where sha' ye sleep?" she questioned. It had occurred to her earlier, but did not occur to her now, to invite him to the rented room until Conor or Talon appeared.

The boy stood. "I sha' be goin' now," he said to her, and then added, in a low voice, "thank you." He smiled at her, and nodded awkwardly to the innkeeper. And then he was gone, slipping out into the black shades of night, and the now silent streets of the empty town.

"Odd lad," said the innkeeper, as he looked toward the lately shut door, with arms akimbo. "And now, faer you, me lass..."

Malon rose, and made her way up the stairs, and toward her room. She had nearly forgotten the number of the door, and when she found it fumbled with the key and lock, but at last the knob turned and the door swung open, and she fell in, wrapped in all but total oblivion. She shut the door, and sat upon the bed. She would stay awake, and wait for her papa, and when he came home she would tell him about the boy... the faery boy... the faery boy who wished to see the princess...

She said all this to herself as she laid her head down on the meticulously straightened coverlet, and it still ran through her mind, like the Cerulean between the green wealth of its banks, as she fell asleep...

Malon was a queen, seated upon the dais, watching the accolade.

No, she was a princess, and her mother was queen, preserved in oil paints, framed in gold, her portrait hung above the king's majestic throne. Malon herself was a princess, dressed in white brocade, the stiff hem and yawning sleeves trimmed with miniver. She stood at her papa, the king's, side, a hand set lightly upon the lacquered backrest of the throne. No amount of imagination could repair the large dustiness of that hand, nor the coarseness of that paternal nose, but in the dim elegance of the stony hall, with its ancient tapestries and stained glass windows, her irregular features were bearable.

Malon stood watching the ceremony before her. Her papa held a magnificent sword, wreathed in a spray of gems at the hilt, above the strong and round shoulder of a young man in chain mail, who knelt before him. He spoke effusively, his rumbling voice low and muffled, and though she could not understand the words, Malon understood the occasion, and was content to watch. The sword made deft movements, tapping both shoulders and the flaxen head, and then came the final pronouncement. The young man stood, his face golden and shining with proud, well-contained joy—his face was too radiant to make out his features, but a soft spot in her heart already beat for him; she whispered, "You are now a knight, now, my dear... a knight..."

And then she recalled her sleeve—she would present it to him, as a token of her love and congratulations. Glancing away, she detached of portion of her sleeve and clasped it in a rough hand. It was best she remain demure, in the act of her presenting the token.

She looked up, holding out the sleeve simultaneously. Words had formed upon her lips; they died, suddenly, strangled, upon her tongue.

The scene had regressed: the knight again upon his knees, her papa's sword suspended above his head. But it was not as it had been—there was something gut-wrenchingly wrong—everyone was frozen, as though for those brief seconds that Malon had bent her eyes downward, their bodies had been turned to stone from the inside, and forced into stances long since passed. Malon dropped the sleeve, and with it fell the comforting mantle that was not herself, that was a stranger's guise, with a stranger's being—the little girl upon the dias was Malon, once again, and she watched Them coming toward her, threading their way across a pool of darkness, tall, ethereal, murmuring, chuckling, their laughing eyes fixed on Malon.

She had never glimpsed Them before, knew Them only as the tall, beautiful, _anthropomorphic_ beings of her mama's stories, the hidden Folk who might one day come to her and give her comfort in her hour of need. They were now here. She had not called them, and did not think she needed their help. But they came of their own volition, and one, a sable-haired fairy dressed in shining white, met her frozen eye, whispered,

_We do not heed the cries of mortals lest it pleases us._

The crowd of fairies stepped closer, laughing—she trembled to hear their merriment, vaulting through the arches and stone. The universe was wavering—the fairies suddenly became as ripples upon a disturbed lake, now tiny, winged flowers—and then there was but one, the great woman Malon had seen before, the one who had taken her mother away, still dressed in vines and roses and towering gold and crimson above Malon.

IHello little one. /I She smiled.

Mouth agape, Malon sank to her knees, laying her palms against the cold stone of the floor as if to brace her rigid body.

_A good mortal is one that knows whom to fear, yes._ The fairy laughed, then waved a hand, dismissing the subject. _You have then seen,_ she continued, in a laugh that was like a breath of gossamer across the skin, _the child whom the gods decreed I and my sisters must protect._

"I... I have," Malon replied, for she knew, instantly, without reflection, of whom the fairy spoke.

_Yes. The little faery boy. You have seen him._ The fairy paused. _He comes forth into your Field, and your towns, to battle a tide of evil._

"A tide of... what?" Confusion. "But why?"

_Unfortunately, .I the fairy went on, ignoring the question, I the lad is young, and his guardians fools. None know evil, and may end up murdering the wrong thing due to their implacable ignorance. Girl. _Malon's neck bowed, she flinched. _I ask this of you, that you succor the Faery Boy's mission, and soothe his pain, that you offer him the greatest fruits of your asylum when he is dispirited—and that you turn him from the errors of his ways._

Malon said nothing, and her eyes only widened.

_And I ask, small lass..._ The fairy woman paused a second time, and smiled, a wide, white, beautiful smile. _I ask you to join me, at some point down the road..._

Malon's breathing trembled volubly; the Fairy glanced down at the knight's bowed head beside her, and waved a disdainful hand. _You are too rigid my dear_ she said, and Malon looked at the knight, suddenly numb to his presence. _Come. Liberate yourself—leave this land, this world—became as a white and gold stream, that whispers the hymns of the sea..._

A sudden tremor tore through Malon—she saw the white and gold stream, by which the Folk knelt at dusk with their captive bride, and smelled the sea upon her mother's skin, the molten pools of Rhiannon's great, dark eyes—a cry erupted from her throat, and she staggered from the ground, hands lifted, eyes liquid with longing, ran toward the fairy. "Take me!" she cried. "Take me with you an' I shall willingly go! I shall go!"

She approached the woman too late. The Fairy shattered into a cloud of winged flowers, like sculptured rays of sun—the flowers began to melt, into the dust of the stone room—voices were laughing, twinkling, and then they were gone...

Malon froze, her arms still outstretched, her eyes wide and wondering.

Malon awoke to a stream of silver light, whitening the spaces of the shuttered window frame on the far wall. She lay still for a moment, disoriented by the drifting affects of stupor. And then she sat up on the bed, and saw she was still alone in the rented room.

A sudden jolt of fear rushed her, and she leaped up, heedless of the clumsy obstacles to the action that were her boots, which she had forgotten to shed, and her dress pockets, bulging with the toys and baubles of yesterday.

She went over to the window and threw open the shutters. The market was spread like a tapestry before her, and teemed already with the scenes of yesterday. Malon gazed down at the streets, and saw no familiar figures. Her stomach clenched. "Aye—Nayru—where is he?" she cried, sagging against the glass, her eyes beginning to smart with moisture. Her papa was still gone. Still closeted in some unruly place, with the blasé, unflustered Conor, and perhaps the gatekeeper they had met on their way in, and the mysterious _Dinah_ of Conor's mentioning, finishing his last pint of mead and lurching from the table, loud and vomiting, as the company laughed at him... Why? Why had she left the ranch, and come into the town with him? Why hadn't she stayed home, under the jurisdiction of Cook, a far more pleasant recourse in contrast to her present circumstance? Why had she gone, when she might have stayed and spent her hours with the filly Epona, and then sat down to eat one of Cook's dispassionately prepared, but hardy meals? She would have slept beneath the shelter of her own roof and awoken to the shafts of sun falling upon her own window, and not that of the rented room. Had she stayed she would not be in turmoil, as she was now, and merely wondering when Papa and Conor would be back. Had she stayed she would not have these knickknacks splitting the seams of her pockets, these damned reminders of her papa's desertion, and her useless attempts to remedy her pain...

There was a sudden thump at the door.

Malon started, gasped, crashed against the pane in her terror. The doorknob quivered, and then the door was flung open to reveal Talon. He stumbled into the room.

"Malon!" he gasped, and laughed, wheezily, as he always did when trying to hide the pain he felt after climbing a flight of stairs. "There ye are!" His great stomach waggled, as he chuckled a bit, and stepped further into the room. "Ready tae go?" he asked.

She stared at him. Her first impulse had been to rush forward and hug him, but then the weight of her tensions crashed down upon her, and became a needle of anger, driving itself into her body and affecting all that it touched.

"You're late," she said, slowly and quietly.

A look of discomfort came to his face, and she saw it with a flash of hatred, a surge of anger. Why did he always don that expression, when he was ashamed? Why didn't he hold himself upright, and answer her in a steady tone?

"I'm sorry," he said, sheepishly. "I guess I fell asleep..."

_Asleep?_ she cried, silently. Her emotion, despite her efforts, became a hard and terrible mask across her features.

"Aye..." He shrugged, and examined the floor. "Too much... ehm... too much—"

"That's all right," she interrupted. She didn't want him to continue in his shame and discomfort.

He visibly brightened. "Well then!" he said, and grinned at her, "Conor's got the wagon awaitin' outside! Let's go."

She followed him out of the room, and he shut and locked the door with his key. They went downstairs, and she watched as he took leave of the innkeeper, who smiled and winked now that morning had come and shone auspiciously upon another fair day of business. "Ye two ha'e a bonny day," the man said, and wiped his hands, covered in a wheat paste, on his apron. "Gude forenoon tae ye, gude forenoon."

Malon and Talon exited the inn, and found Conor leaned on the wagon, rubbing the head of Blue Bess with one hand and stroking his smooth, golden chin with the other. "Hi'll be the driver this day," he said, and smiled impishly at Talon. "Ye may be a bit—what'd they call it?— _hung over_, from yestreen."

Talon chortled, and went around to the passenger side of the wagon; Malon clambered into its back. "I'm better now lad," he said, stumbling as he attempted a hop into the seat. "Jes' a bit unsteady on my feet."

Conor laughed. "Eh, I see." He jostled the reigns while Talon settled down, and the horses began their slow trundle away from the door of the inn.

"Ye ne'er encourage those castle wenches tae ply me with drinks again, eh?" Talon said, after a moment. "I near forgot poor Malon, back there in the rented room." He smiled at his daughter, and she returned the kind gesture with a tight, difficult one of her own; Conor glanced haughtily at her, as though he did so only to acknowledge the rambling utterances of his friend. Malon stared at him, and a dull repulsion stirred in her gut. She wondered now how she had ever fancied _him_ a son of Hyperion, or that he was worthy of her adoration. _Ye're a lout,_ she thought, _a stupid one; ye took my papa from me an' the faeries don't even like you, I bet—_

"Hi saw ye runnin' as though the hell hounds were on yer heels through the town earlier today," Conor was saying over the rumble of the wagon wheels. "What was wrong?"

Talon laughed. "Well there was Malon—an' Moira an' Eoin won' be happy if we get back late—I ne'er tole 'em I was fixin' tae stay overnight..."

Conor nodded. "Aye, aye... well, who woke ye up this forenoon? Some _zatfig_ lassie?"

"Nah, a little boy in green—I suppose he was a kitchen boy 'r somethin'... his dress was sort of strange though, an' I swore he had a sword strapped tae his back..."

Malon started, and glanced up at Talon. "A little boy in green?" she asked.

Neither man gave any indication of having heard her inquiry, and at length the conversation turned to insinuations of "yestreen" and mindless. Malon turned away, and the wet nose of Blue Bess thrust itself into her half curled palms, demanding attention. She began to obligingly pet the bristles of the dog's muzzle.

"Ye'll be kind tae me, eh girl?" she whispered. "Ye'll be kind... ye an' the little faery boy..." She leaned forward suddenly, confidential, her features alight. "He saved my papa Bess," she said. "Maybe some stupid _zatfig_ lassie might ha'e come along an' woke up Papa, an' she might ha'e delayed him—but no, 'twas the faery boy; he woke up Papa, and returned him tae me..."

Malon leant back, smiling.

The faeries had been kind.

The last three miles stretching between the travelers and the ranch were to Malon a pain. She turned in her seat and craned her neck to see around the backside of the bench and her papa, and could clearly make out the ranch against the dawning afternoon. It was an immense structure, standing on several acres of fertile plain, and shut in completely by a tall, wide wall that spanned the perimeter. The red shingles of the house peeked just above this wall, and the barn was concealed from this vantage. It wasn't until you passed through the entryway, with the walls rising and twisting above you like a roofless tunnel, that you saw the low, inconspicuous frame of the barn. Its face was dark, blackened by the elements, stable and trustworthy despite its age.

Beyond the foremost features stood the bronzed crown of the storage tower, standing plumb against the horsetail white and blue of the sky. Beyond the ranch, half-hidden by the highland swells and clasping the distant horizon, the tips of Kokiri Forest peeped. Malon had never been to that part of the Field, which was its southernmost, because her father and the hands had never wished to journey that far, where everything was empty and quite possibly dead. And if she had ever broached the subject of visiting there for "a holiday" with her mother, Rhiannon would say, quickly,

"Oh no, we canna go down there... it's unsafe."

Malon sometimes wondered if her mother had been afraid of the forest.

Time passed and the horses trundled on with leisurely intent, seeming indisposed to hasten their stride. It was therefore at long, long last that the wagon finally came to a stop in the yard of the Lon Lon Ranch, and Conor leaped from the bench.

"Home at last!" he said.

Blue Bess leaped from the wagon, and Malon followed suite. She could see Eoin hurrying toward them. "Maister Talon!" Eoin cried, when he was within earshot, "ye be a' right? We ha' no inkling ye'd bide a hail night i' town!"

Talon laughed, and asked, frivolously, "Well, an' why should ye?"

Eoin's mouth pulled in to itself, and he straightened, face stark. The change was momentary, brought by astonishment; he soon turned to Malon, said, "Moira was lookin' faer ye. She said 'twas a shame ye dinna ha'e yer nightdress."

Malon smiled.

She went inside the house, as the men began to unload the wagon and carry the empty crates back toward the tower. She caught a glimpse of Ingo, coming toward them from the corral, and decided she would rather face Cook than be polite to the steward. The main room was empty, though the sounds of Cook's knife could be heard in the kitchen, and Malon went upstairs.

The water in the pitcher was cold, but she poured it into a bowl and washed up anyway, dressing herself in a fresh set of clothes when she had done. She took the baubles from her old garment's pockets and stuffed them into a drawer, removed the ribbons that bound the collapsing tower of her hair and shook the tresses free. Having completed her toilette, Malon left her room, skipped down the stairs, and went into the kitchen.

Cook glanced at her as she entered, and gestured with the ominous tip of the knife toward a pile of kale. Malon, having translated the import of this gesture many times before, went over to the pile and began to strip the leaves from their stalks.

"It's sae nice tae be home," she said absently. "The rented room was lonely."

"I know," said Cook.

They said no more.

There came with the night a damp, heavy heat, and the air was wet, and difficult to breathe. Malon lay gasping beneath her coverlet, and at last was forced to rise. Each breath was thick and strenuous, as she pottered across the room and came to the window, unlatching the shutters, throwing them open with a sigh of relief.

Cold, damp air gushed in, and the shutters quivered, shaken by the breeze. Malon leaned against the frame, inhaling the purity, and then opened her eyes, and looked out into the yard. The world was dyed in the sundry shades of darkness, lit only by grey, fading stars. Her eyes were slow to adjust to the gloom, but when they had, she gave names to the black, lifeless shapes crouching in the distance.

There was little to hear, beyond the sigh of the wind, the rustlings of the pear trees planted chaotically about the ranch. The trees had been planted in her mother's time; neglect and the seasons had all but ravished them, leaving them to struggle for life at spring each year. All their ivory blossoms had gone, though at times the wind would reveal their dead, off-white shapes, when it stirred them from graves among the grass and urged them about the yard. Mother had loved pear trees, Malon thought—pear trees and old roses, folds of white velvet, strings of pearls. And faeries. Rhiannon had loved faeries. "One mus' love them," Malon had once heard her murmuring to herself, "jes' as one mus' hate them."

Standing there, inhaling the fresh air, and watching the earth slumber, Malon wondered how one could hate the Fair Folk. They were so beautiful, so full of magic, so powerful and arcane. Who could hate beauty, and ethereality, the rejuvenating charms of dreams, and the people to whom the dreams belonged?

Malon leaned Hero-like against the window frame and cocked her head, listening, wondering if she would hear the hamadryad crying again this night.

"Perhap ye ha'e found yer home, an' yer tree," she murmured, "or perhaps ye still maunder, resigned tae yer fate." She paused, shivering in the vague chill—the earth breathed upon her arms, raised her gooseflesh. "If ye be faery," she continued, in a softer voice, "if ye be faery, I sha' help ye. The faeries wish me tae succor one of their own. Perhaps you are he. Perhaps you, my hamadryad, are he..."

* * *

**A/N: **I have got to clean this up at some point. But not on my vacation time. 


	7. Transcendence

**Chapter VI: Transcendence**

Nothing was right with the world.

It was dusk, aged sunrays peering through the royal library's window, dust and gold upon the face of the girl standing there: Princess Zelda, numb, staring sightlessly upon a gloom only torpor could see. Her poise, her pallor, her isolated stance: all murmured turmoil, that moment in which the mind is threatened by a sickness that comes with hard understanding. An hour had passed, soft, like winged fleece, and she remained in solitude, robbed of the meeting her Papa had promised her.

But what was the use of hoping for his appearance? It was best to realise, here and now, that her father would not come.

She had been silly to hope he would, for her father had given his promise in a hurry last evening, as minstrels packed away their instruments and courtiers coughed secrets from the door of the Great Hall. Zelda had wondered, vaguely, if the barons of her father's court thought her too thick to translate their scrupulous coughs, that she would not note the rhythm, the volume, the way their eyes rolled and necks swivelled, full of indication, impatient, thinking, "_Damn_ that princess, detaining the king..."

There was a great deal for the courtiers to speak with the king about: states, money, wills, holdings—the list was endless, repetitive to those who did not fully understand. Zelda knew nothing of these things, for she'd never had the will to care for such tedium. She dwelt in a higher realm, dwelt in Transcendence, and it was from those lofty realms that Sleep gathered her a flock of dreams, a herd of visions that read Hyrule's fate like the eyes of a prophet.

The princess had dreamt vividly in these past weeks, terrible visions breaking upon her slumber. She thought it wise to convey these visions to the king.

Her need to speak was as urgent as any courtier's requirements; _more_ urgent, in fact—in this she did not flatter herself. The fate of the world was decided in Transcendence, and Zelda had been given a slice of this premeditation. Hyrule was her world, the king the most significant being within it. Gasping, heart throbbing, viscera churning, Zelda made her way to her father's ear, etiquette and guests despite, and stated her case, entreated. Her papa kept glancing over her shoulder, flinging compensating smiles at those who required his attention; every fragment of his manner said, "Forgive me—my daughter—one must humour the princess—", while he leant her his half ear, his wan smile, his drumming fingers, his stifled sighs.

Princess Zelda had noted every gesture of impatience; defied it with every well-mannered weapon she possessed. The dreams of Transcendence could not be denied, and she would defend their right to be heard. She was the king's daughter, after all.

But as she stood at the library window, staring into a garden rich with summer, it became clear: being a king's daughter hardly mattered when it came to king's reluctance.

For the first half hour, Zelda had given her father the benefit of a doubt. Courtiers, as usual, she supposed, detaining him, coughing, gesturing, insinuating. Her papa, slumped in heat of his pavilion. Watching people come and go. Voices without distinction—a buzzing mass. This was what kept him from the rendevous he had promised her.

But as she had watched him that afternoon striding down the path, robust and armed with hunting spear, servants swarming and scattering like bees in a tumult, calling for horses, her Papa's voice, "And _this_, Lord Ganondorf, is what we Hylians call the _true_ hunt!"—as she watched this, her leniency began to wilt and fade, and by the time Impa had glanced into the library, saying, "Your father and his huntsmen have gone out. You can take your supper in your room...", Zelda had fully comprehended her situation.

There would be no rendezvous. Promises soured like filth upon her tongue.

She continued to watch the walkway hours after her father, his entourage, and his Gerudo guest had vanished from the gardens. She took no pleasure in the silence, eyes glued to the triangular sandstone, watching how it wound to the left there, and to the right there, one toward the dark, where the leaves are wet and the air too heavy to breathe, the other through patches of sunlight, where the air was dry and smelt of sunrays. But she was without other occupation, and there was something to be said for tenacity, staring at the spot where one's hopes had been dashed, pretending that the object of one's pain might still show up with apologies and recompense.

But of course she waited in vain.

Her mind wandered when she could no longer concentrate upon that stagnant view; she saw Lord Ganondorf, as her vision slipped beyond the sandstone path and she saw stars instead of bushes, when her sight forgot reality. It was difficult to imagine Ganondorf as a whole; much easier to imagine him in parts: for instance, he was a fine horseman. One saw how the Gerudo women handled their mounts, as though it were nothing. One could imagine him mounting his steed, all grace and ease, scaring off the stablehands.

Her dreams had once shown him to her, riding out at the dead of night, leaving the hospitality of the castle for something wild and untamed.

She could not imagine that he rode nightly in the direction of his desert realm. The desert had always belonged to him and his tribe; this wild spirit after which he chased in the lightless hours—this had never belonged to him.

The westering sun was at a sharp incline, her vision languid and blurred. Zelda straightened, thrust herself away from the window sill, and wandered into a corner of the library. This portion of the chamber was outfitted for her use, laid with a rosewood table, a workshop that fostered her newfound hobby: potpourri. Her caretaker, Impa had noted Zelda's restlessness; had suggested a hobby, gathered baskets of dried rose petals and bought embroidered pouches from the village all for the princess's amusement.

The workshop had been situated in the library, which had ever been a venue for Zelda's meditations. She fancied coming here in times of stress, tranquil in her sould, steeped in knowledge. This library was her throne, a symbol of her wisdom, her peace. She would settle herself upon some placid couch—an humble hero would bow before her, murmuring: "Help me, oh my princess." And she would lift him, give him words of wisdom, a gentle smile—

And here she stood, at the centre of her library, a wretched creature full of wretched thoughts, doubts, fears. She would have no hero, not yet. Only her womanhood, creeping upon her like perversion. She admired the idea of being a woman, that went without saying, for she knew that to be one was to be strong, brave, a bastion of all things good and wise: _this_ she so wished to be. But womanhood... it brought ideas childhood had deemed staunchly wrong to consider, brought shades to matters that should have been strictly black and white.

_And he leaves the castle for something wild in the night, something inhuman—but why won't he stay here, with... Are we not good enough for him? Am I...? Who will be his future wife? Am I good enough...?_

_Dear gods, don't._

She had given her attention once more to the window; her heart, now, began to drum, quickening her breath, sparking tears. Zelda spun away from the casement, gasping audibly; she retreated to her little workshop, pitching herself in a flurry of labour across the rosewood surface of the table. Both table and floor were strewn with dried roses; the maids had given up arranging their princess's workshop, for Zelda plied steadily at her hobby, and had neither time nor tolerance for organization.

Organization brought silence, and silence brought thoughts that could should not be considered.

Her breathing was growing louder, while she agitated her supplies and crushed petals into a drawstring pouch. Words were trickling from each wild breath; Zelda gave way to them, began talking to herself, then singing in that broken, untrained way Impa had always warned her never to let her father hear. The princess was a disappointment in the musical vein, unable to understand or reiterate tunes either with her voice or the royal ocarina. Zelda knew one song—a royal lullaby—but everyone with the business to know the song knew it: her knowledge carried nothing spectacular. It was commonly known that her father loved wild arias, tunes that carried the whisper of the moor upon them, tunes that evoked the faeries in their dancing step and song. It was also common knowledge that the king's wife had once sung to him thus, before she lost her mind and sang garbled, witless songs to the walls of her chamber.

Zelda's musical attempts often had the same, hideous effect of a madwoman.

But here, in solitude, Zelda was saved the grimaces of those she loved, and was not obliged to hate herself and her performance so that she would not feel too strongly the disapproval of those around her. She sang, warding off the creeping thoughts that were the product of silence.

But they came to her despite her industry.

Her impending marriage was changing everything, threatening convention more grotesquely than she thought possible. It bore her to womanhood at a run, altered her humours from giddy happiness to fear and depression. The princess was not of a nature to support these changes; she clung to her child's solemnity and steadiness of manner, and found to her shock even this balance altered, ripened, mellowing. Her temperament was no longer ordered, but as wild as it was mild, finding objects more tangible than Transcendence to fix and shower its womanly affection upon. Solitude gave way to thoughts proscribed; stalked by loneliness, Zelda was suddenly and horribly aware of a change in her thinking.

Perhaps her marriage was not something to be deplored, but release.

The princess shuddered, a wave of trepidation surging from her belly into her throat. Singing was useless, she thought, hastily: it offered no relief from thoughts unwelcome or the spasms of shame that came with the consciousness of her noise. She shook her head, desperate, reapplying herself to potpourri petals and baskets with increased vigour.

It was disloyal to indulge in the recollection of her waverings. They deviated too much to be borne, and the sooner she was rid of them, the better. Even if Lord Ganondorf himself were not a part of the equation, there was still no pride, no honour in the connection: she was to be married into the _Gerudo_. The death of old prejudices was not to be so soon effected; Zelda remembered too well the disdain for that race upon which she had been raised. Her Papa had done well in combating his people's aversion, in subduing it so that its ugly head was buried somewhere, always capable of rising again but thank God it didn't at that moment. Mutual dislike was still there and still worked, and Zelda, with nothing else to cling to, clung to it, refusing to find pleasure in her impending marriage or any persons involved.

But pleasure was a demon, and would be found where it wished to be found.

Perhaps she would be released from the strictures of being her father's daughter, she thought, freed and given access to an alien realm, one she would cultivate as new, private ground—her own, her dearest, another version of life, her Ganondorf—

With a lurch, Zelda pulled back from the table, scattering the contents of her workshop. "Lord Ganondorf wants something," she mumbled, turning her eyes to the waxing twilight, stealing from the east and swallowing the casement several feet beyond her. "He wants something and it shall be our misfortune if he gets it!"

It was her final endeavour to rid herself of thoughts that should not be: throttle them with her dreams from Transcendence.

"He is evil—his intentions are evil—he cannot be trusted; I know he cannot be trusted!" She gasped her avowals, rising and quitting her table, trailing her way toward the window. "I know this—" Now whispering. "He must be stopped and I shall stop him, I and the forest boy—that is how it must be..."

Her dreams had brought her to this conclusion, that the Gerudo King could not be trusted, that he would sow evil in the righteous places of Hyrule, destroying all that was good and virtuous, grasping Hyrule with the iron of tyranny and rule her as though the gods had bestowed that country upon him. Her visions had shown her his procedure: he would attempt to steal the Triforce, the gods' last gift to mankind, and use it to fulfill whatever dark purpose inhabited him. Her resistance would be simple: withhold Ganondorf's means of accessing the Triforce from him, and so—and therefore—

Well, as long as she performed her part of her counteraction, triumph was inevitable. Fate had been so good as to direct her this far; undoubtedly, if she but laboured upon this end and parried Ganondorf's blow, Fate would conclude the business.

Zelda believed firmly in the devices of Fate.

She'd always imagined she firmly believed...

* * *

Her dreams were both caution and confirmation, for they came frequently, unprovoked. 

Zelda could do nothing _but_ believe them. She had confided in Impa, and Impa had listened — but at times, the princess wondered if prejudice formed the crux of Impa's attention, prejudice against the Gerudo, or prejudice in the favour of Zelda herself. Impa was her caretaker: perhaps it was her duty to attend to the wild words of her charge. Zelda disliked to think of Impa in this way, and was prepared to believe her caretaker sincere and unbiased. But even filial affection was obliged to make way for reason, and Zelda realised that to doubt was to be wise; Impa could not be wholly depended on, and the princess was struck with the thirst to find another in whom to confide.

She had considered her father, had endeavoured several times to tell him of her anxiety. But he was preoccupied; he ordered her to divert herself. But all was not lost. Her dreams had shown her another confidante, a boy from the forest, accompanied by a faery. He was slight of build, blonde of tress, fey of countenance—he would emerge into the Hylian proper, and was essential to the salvation of Hyrule. It would be _he_ who would collect the three Spiritual Stones and conceal them from Ganondorf, as a constituent of the key that would unclose the hiding place of the Triforce. She had dreamt of him, stepping from the wood's black line of trees into a band of light. She had doubted at first, for such an appearance seemed too miraculous.

It was well known that no one lived in the forest.

But he had come to her, after a time, come crashing through the gardens with guards at his heels, hiding himself before she realised what was going on. She had been strolling, minutes quit of the garden spot where she took lessons with a priest from the Temple of Time (it had been too fine a day to have lessons indoors). She carried a sheaf of papers, quill, a pot of ink, watching, ostensibly, for no one, hoping—But her hope was like that of a puppy, and was best left unsaid.

A commotion, disturbing the peace, had raised a flock of tamed doves from their haunts, and brought her from reverie, into shock. Turning—a flash of green diving behind a hedge, and a ball of light, caught between the forest green and herself—shadows streaking down the path, followed by a pair of gilded soldiers.

"My lady?"

The tallest of the couplet, throwing back his casque, muddy brown eyes latching onto hers. He paused, spear upraised. "My lady, I fear—"

"Don't let them get us," whispered a tiny voice near her ear. "Please. I'm Navi. A faery. We were sent by the Deku Tree, me and the boy, please don't let them get us—"

A trill of heat near the back of her head, as though a lantern were held there.

Zelda did not know what she thought at that moment, for her words came instantaneously, inspired. "You fear what?"

"A disturbance. There's a been a breach—at least—we think we saw a boy slip in here. A commoner boy. From what we saw of his garb, we think a commoner boy's slipped in here."

"I saw no boy."

"Eh..."

A shared glance, questioning themselves—or perhaps they questioned her, but the princess was too excited to mind.

"I fear you are deluded," she said, bravely. "I saw no boy. The only disturbance I am aware of is your crashing in upon my peace."

"Eh..."

"Are you sure you saw a boy? Perhaps you imagine things? It is hot—summer, the air—you could be imagining things. I think you are, _I_ saw no boy. And if there was one, that would mean the guard is not being vigilant this day—"

"Oh _no_ Princess, the Royal Guard has been _very_ vigilant, very much so; your father's orders."

"I hope so," she replied, face softening. "I think you have been seeing things."

"Oh course," said the first guard slowly, nodding, as though he would convince himself of an overactive imagination.

"But whist! Back to your stations. If there is a boy, and he is disagreeable, I shall call."

"Yes my lady."

"Good-bye," she said, glancing at the path.

"Very good, my lady." The soldiers scraped the sandstone in obeisance, then turned and marched away.

"Thank you," whispered the tiny voice.

Zelda did not answer, but turned toward the hedge.

There _was_ a boy, tangled in the vegetation after his plunge, and he worked his way from the nettles with that stony expression of one who will not cave in to pain. He was torn upon every inch of flesh, but managed, once he had liberated his body, to turn his eyes upon her, lips moving, a whisper of a voice, "Thank you."

"Who are you?" she returned, looking him up and down. She feared to believe.

"His name is Link," said the small voice. It drew close to her ear, and she glanced from the tail of her eye; there, upon the fringe of her lashes, floated a globe of light, suspended from translucent wings. "We are from Kokiri Forest, sent by the Deku Tree. He has died, Your Majesty, our guardian has died, and he gave Link the Emerald—the Spiritual Stone of the forest. He sent us to you, my lady—please, you must guide us!"

"And indeed I will." Zelda's voice had dropped to a murmur, her eyes wide with fascination. Doubt was long expunged; she had no reason _not_ to believe her dreams now. The Boy from the Forest had come, bringing with him a faery and a Spiritual Stone.

"I will tell you all, and you will help me!" she gushed. "Come, come, let us leave this place—"

And though she disliked the unlighted corners of the gardens, she led the boy there, toward a unshuttered window that looked directly into the Great Hall.

"I am Princess Zelda," she whispered, when they had been situated, settling onto a bench beneath the casement sill.

"Lately, my dreams have been troubled. Do you know? My dreams—they are visions—Higher Beings send them to me, of this I am convinced, for they always come true. I have dreamed of our beloved Hyrule—of its rivers and its desert, its mountains and its field and its forests."

She saw him start, pupils dilate, and knew she had spoken correctly.

"I have seen them covered in shadow."

A pause.

"I have seen them destroyed, demolished by evil. Your Deku Tree—I think he is but a first victim."

A shiver, rocking the boy like a coracle at sea; she saw his hands twitch, his blue eyes dart to them, a look of horror melting over his countenance; he plucked at his tunic, began to rub his palms with it. The movement was nauseatingly compulsive, and Navi flew at him, hissing something—he stopped dead.

"Do you believe me?" Zelda asked.

He nodded, broken, like a shattered marionette, slumped and sapped of his strength.

"You must—you must!"

"I do."

He had come for some answer or another, and had gotten it. She pursued her track, rolling onto her knees, pressing herself closer to him, confidential, shivering.

"I must tell you about this land," she whispered, urgently. "There were once three goddesses, who descended from heaven with the intention of creating life—they created the land and the sea and order and harmony that governs us. Din made the mountains and the terrain, and Farore the creatures that populate them. Nayru gave us night and day, emotion and intention and natural law. All three of them returned to heaven when they had given us these things.

"But before they had crossed that plane that separates their realm from ours, they combined their powers and created an emblem: three triangles in the shape of one—_their last gift to mankind_. They created another world just like this and hid the Triforce there, then ascended to heaven and left us to ourselves, with the edict that the Triforce should be left untouched. If it were touched, it would grant the wish of whomever had reached it. Should a person with a good heart make a wish, the land would come into a golden age. But should a person with a bad heart make a wish, destruction would be ours. I fear, Link, that there is someone with a bad heart who would find and seize the Triforce, and make the world his own with his power. We must keep Hyrule safe from him; we must retrieve the other two Spiritual Stones that will allow him to open the door to the Sacred Realm, and hide them from him. The Gorons are possessed of one, the Zoras the other—you must ask them—tell them what I have said, that I have sent you—here—to get to the Gorons, you must have royal permission." Fumbling with her paper and quill and ink, scratching her name into the vellum.

A strange look had come upon the boy's face, and he watched her formulate a note of permission. "Is the man with the cruel heart—is he from the desert?" he asked, softly.

Zelda paused, glancing up, her expression grave.

"He is," she replied.

"The Deku Tree—" The boy shifted, falling silent.

"That man is here," Zelda said, dropping her voice, stuffing the note into the boy's hand. "That man—that man is—he is called—"

And she raised her head, turning toward the window.

She gagged.

Lord Ganondorf stood blurred against the stained panes. Through a unclouded fragment of glass, his eyes met hers, and drew into a smile.

Her heart froze within her, the echo of its tattoo like thunder in her ears.

* * *

Princess Zelda could never be sure if Lord Ganondorf had observed Link as well as herself, for Link's head remained a full arm's length below the window sill, as Zelda knelt staring in horror at her husband to be, smiling at her through the stained glass.

"Who do you speak of?" asked Navi.

Zelda could not answer.

Ganondorf gazed at her a moment longer, then turned aside. There was significance in his crimson eyes, a message she had not interpreted. He vanished into the gloom, and Zelda's heart drummed. She could not recall its restarting.

"My lady—"

"We must go."

She did not look at Link as she rose from the bench and started down the path. To do so had suddenly grown too terrible; she could not face his confusion, his cherubic look. Fluid had begun to stream through her pores and viscera, fluid horror at her own actions, a distinct feeling that she had been caught in the wrong, had been caught in treachery. The boy—he formed a part of her traitorous actions, but her own self, her visions and her protestations—they were the crux of her treachery, her evil...

_Dear gods, what's happening to me? Treachery? Evil?_

She had spoken falsely, had spoken with passion, when passivity and acceptance were needed.

_If there are any evil persons in this world, _you _number among them,_ princess, _you_—

Zelda slammed her hands to her ears with a shrill little cry, halting before she had gone many steps, staggering backward into a hedge. She was aware of the spectacle—she saw, from the corner of her eye, the expression upon the boy's face, his unhinged jaw and distended eyes. The faery against her ear, "Princess? Princess? Princess?" And then a whirl of images, none of which made sense, a kaleidoscope—seating herself, she watches the world spin by...

There was Impa, who came striding along the path, something amused and cautious in her eye, the turn of her mouth. Zelda saw it as though a haze—the half-moment during which the expression lingered, its change to that of surprise, astonishment, disbelief.

"How did you get in here?" she asked, staring at the boy. "How did you—?"

Zelda was no longer an asset to the scene, at least felt unlike one, and Navi spoke in her place, made assertions and entreaties and several times Impa glanced at her confounded charge. The faery seemed to despair, flew between the princess and her nursemaid, speaking in piping tones. "Is this true?" came at last from Impa. "Is this true?"

"He's the boy from my dreams," said a Zelda mechanically.

Zelda no longer had the happiness of even one self, for a part of her had scrambled back to the tradition of espousing the Transcendence—dreams, visions, the evil of Ganondorf. The princess was sundered, still a traitor, despite everything, despite her convictions. But were her convictions true? Or did she utter them merely because she felt safe? But no—there was no safety in any part of her parted being. Raw, exposed—she saw now the gulf, the limbo unclosing its jaw beneath her feet. She convicted Ganondorf upon spurious report, for could she be trusted to understand what her dreams meant? If they meant anything at all? Did she doubt justice? Or did she deceive and misconstrue to satisfy what she had always done: giving significance to her dreams?

But her madness and doubt touched no one. Impa comprehended the situation in a blink of an eye; she took the boy firmly by the shoulder, and glanced at Zelda.

"Have you finished—?"

Zelda nodded, numb, sluggish.

"The guards will not take kindly to your being here," said Impa wryly. "Come, I shall guide you out. You must do what the Princess asks you, all right?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"Come," she murmured. She glanced again at Zelda, though the princess did not comprehend her look, and the two left the garden. Zelda did not watch them go.

She had found no rest that night, for her mind was ravaged by dreams, visions of Ganondorf and the boy from the forest and herself, Hyrule in flames. An empty castle, its drawbridge flung wide like a broken jaw, looming before her as she staggered from the wreckage of the Market Town.

The boy, sweeping like an angel from the twilit woods, his burning light breaking the night.

Oh, how _breathtaking_ his smile, pure and bright, stirring hope and hope and hope—but there was no hope for her, none for her—only hatred and fear; how she _hated_ him, she _hated_ the boy...

She watched him smiling, unsheathing his sword, and she shrieked in her terror and her anguish and shook her fetters. _Wretched thing!_ she screamed. _Go from here—_

But he would not go, tread steadily forward, the bright light of purity driving its presence upon the terror of night, scalding the creatures twilight commanded, and back they scattered, helpless, hopeless, shrieking till their screams tore their throats. The sword, lifted, driven forward into the heart of the darkness, and his smile—oh, his beautiful, fatal smile—!

And then he vanished.

Vanished, his eyes shut in bliss and his sword falling from his nerveless clasp; bliss, as a hand drew him from darkness into light, such pure, lovely light, so white and startling against the inky heaven—drew him into that brilliance buried in the earth, like an evil interred—but there could be no evil here. No evil—only sweetness and perfume and goodness and bliss. A sigh that covered the earth—he vanished, as though he had been buried, buried in light so beautiful, so refulgent, so pure it was hideous.

She watched the girl with red hair clawing at the ground with her nails, her mouth open and screaming.

_It's all right, _the princess laughed,_ it's all right—he's happy now, so very happy now, he doesn't wish to return, leave him be._

And Zelda felt her soul rising within her chest—she smiled and laughed and spun around and around and around, for the lightness would cleave her if she did not disperse it, if she did not give it to the universe as a balm for all its pain.

_Don't cry, you silly girl, he's safe and well now—you'll tear your fingers and bend your nails backward at the roots, and_ then _you'll have a reason to scream._ Machree. _Be reasonable, be happy—he's_ happy _there..._

She had diffused her happiness and could move without fear of rupture. She made her way into the shadows, eager, searching, a single name upon her curved and smiling lips:

_Ganondorf, Ganondorf, Ganondorf, Ganondorf!_

* * *

Princess Zelda awoke with a cry, flinging herself from bed, against the casement, fumbling with the latch, shoving open the panes. She hung the top half of her body over the sill, into the humid, unbreathable air of the garden, and gasped dryly.

_Ganondorf, Ganondorf, Ganondorf, Ganondorf..._

* * *

All this she considered as she stood at the window, looking into the garden, growing dark with the westering rays of the sun.

"He is evil—his intentions are evil—he cannot be trusted—he cannot be trusted..." she whispered.

Her mantra was not working.

Her dreams had failed.


	8. Lovely Made of Sunshine

**Chapter 7: Lovely Made of Sunshine**

"The princess is gettin' married! The princess is gettin' married! The princess is get—Oh—!"

From the top of the staircase there came a thump and a gasp, and then a series of _cracks_ and _thuds_ and yelps of pain, as Malon Lon Lon discovered the quick, if painful, way of traversing the stairs.

"Aye, an' so the princess _is_ gettin' haerself married," drawled Cook from the kitchen, when the bumps and bangs had ceased, and silence settled in. "But _my_ question is, shall ye live tae _see_ it?"

She snaked her long, thin neck around the kitchen doorframe as she finished this pronouncement, and found Malon an undignified heap of arms and legs and best clothes at the foot of the steps. It had not been an inconsequential tumble the little girl had taken, and all the elasticity of youth could not save her some bruising. Malon clambered to her feet, holding the wall for support, and offered up a wincing smile.

"Do ye live, girl?" Cook asked, and looked her up and down.

"I'm sure I do!" Malon exclaimed, in a tone that was much too cheerful to hold anything but the deepest pain and mortification. She took a bold step forward, but a stab of pain lanced through her; she yelped. Cook rolled her eyes.

"It's only _just_ that ye do, apparently. See now! Ye've made a fool of all my hard work, chit; ye've gone on an' ruined yaer clothes."

Malon's face fell. "They ain' _ruined_, Cook, not at all!" She looked down at her clothes with a grimace that belied her protest, and pawed at the rumpled fabric with anxious gesture. "They only want a bit o' straightenin'!"

"An' a bit of _washin'_ an' a bit of _shakin'_ _out_ and a bit of _ironin'_ and a bit o' _stitchin'_. Nayru's _truth_, chit, _look_ at ye." Cook stepped from the kitchen and fell upon Malon with the vengeance of a Fury. "There's sawdust all down yaer back an' ye've cuckoo droppin'sin yaer hair. Goddesses _sakes_, girl, do ye even _sweep_ the grime fraem them corners?"

"I do!" Malon squeaked, though this was not necessarily true.

"Nayru's _truth_." Cook clucked deep and bitterly in her throat, as she swatted dust and chicken droppings from Malon's dress. "I've a mind tae send ye back upstairs and _change_."

"But I only want a bit o' dustin' _down_!"

Cook gripped Malon's shoulders and gave her a hard look from top to toe. "Ye get yaerself back up there and wipe off those smudges you've gone on and put on yaer dress. And ye wash up! Yaer face is as gray as a miner's."

"It _ain't_!" Malon cried, distressed that Cook could speak such lies.

"I'm the one lookin' at it an' I say it is. Go comb yaer hair. Goddesses _sake_, ye dress 'em once an' they canna be bothered tae stay clean faer a bless'd _minute_. For Din's sake, ye _walk_ when ye go up those steps! I catch you jumpin' on'm again—"

"Ye won', Cook, ye won'!" Malon exclaimed, and breaking free of Cook's taloned grip, scrambled back up the steps.

"I said no runnin'!" Cook bawled from below.

Malon burst into her room, tearing the dress over her head even as she ran. She had not bothered to untie the sash about her waist—who _could, _on a day as grand as _this_?—and it caught her hair so that she struggled for a moment to free herself. A little gurgle of irritation and dismay broke from her. The day she had so long looked forward to was upon her—upon them all: ranch and hands and faraway castle alike—and she would be the only person in all of Hyrule still cooped up inside and bothering with stupid best dresses, thanks to Cook. She freed herself at last and threw her best dress onto the bed.

The door slammed belowstairs, and Eoin's voice filled the common room. "Moira! Ye done yet? We've brought up the wagon and hitched up the team and we're missing the lasses! Where's Malon?"

"Malon's dressin'. We'll be out soon enough, Eoin, we'll be out!"

Malon's heart filled her throat. She and Eoin had had it between them last evening: he had commissioned her to help him cushion the bottom of the wagon with straw, for the journey into Market Town. She wanted to lay the straw very much; she envisioned making a small nest in the corner of the bed, right behind her papa's place on the bench.

"Eoin!" she shouted, running from her room and hanging over the rail to peer down into the common room. "Ye haven't laid the straw, have ye?"

Eoin was standing in the kitchen doorway, stooping a little as if he feared to strike his head against the lintel. He grinned up at her. "No straw yet," he said, "but soon. Hurry _up_, ye want t' help!"

"She ain't gettin' herself any dirtier than she was when she came down a minute ago," Moira snarled.

"I _won'_ get dirty; it's just _straw_."

"Malon!" Eoin shook his head at her. "Doan ye draw my sister out or ye'll never leave the house. Go back an' wash yaer face if ye have to. Is that yaer underkirtle?"

"Oh!" Malon remembered she was wore nothing but underclothes. "Oh, I'll be right back."

"Malon Lon Lon!" Cook swept from the kitchen like a killing wind. "Get back in yaer room and make yaerself decent—yaer _underkirtle_—?" Her expression pinched with disbelief.

Malon ducked back into her room. A moment later, she heard Eoin go back outside.

There was still some water in the basin; she splashed it upon her face and scrubbed her skin with a washcloth, before wringing out the excess water and attacking the spots on her dress. She worked with too fierce a gusto: the dress looked spotty and beaten by the time she had finished.

Malon redressed. A glance around the room assured her that there was no comb to be had, and so she began to rake her fingers through her hair—fingers were as good as combs, anyway, and one had to use them somehow. She could hear Conor's dogs barking; voices, muffled by the walls, drifted too and fro below.

"Malon!" Moira shouted. "Ye _finished_?"

"I'm finished!" Malon tumbled back down the stairs.

"I see ye di'n't learn yaerself a single _lesson_ the first time ye fell," Moira said, and snatched at her.

"But I didn't fall _this_ time." Malon ducked from beneath Cook's outstretched hand. "I'm clean, Cook, I am!"

"Where are yaer _shoes_?"

"Outside near the barn; I left 'em there."

"Left—? Ye careless little _chit_—"

"I'll get 'em, Cook, I will!" And before Moira could add further insults to her first, Malon fled outside.

The heat fell upon the little girl as she emerged, like a heavy, smothering weight. But Malon could not bother with the heat: she continued her flight across the yard. The wagon stood a few yards removed from the house and barn, poised for departure. Eoin stood tall and red and sweating among a golden heap of square bales, arms full of blankets and great swathes of canvas for tents. They were to stay through the night at the castle: the wedding party would continue on through tomorrow. Her Papa was handing tent material and tools up to him.

"I want tae help!" Malon cried. She reached the wagon and clambered onto the wheel; the strip of metal that reinforced the topmost edge sizzled against her feet, and she tumbled over the side into a scattering of loose hay.

"Careful there!" Talon cried, over Eoin's roar of laughter. The fall had left Malon topsy-turvy; she struggled to flip upright but was saved by a pair of arms thick with hair: her papa's arms. He flipped her right-side up and the world made a wide, whipping circle before her. Malon shouted with delight. Her papa's hands were damp with sweat, and he smelled of horses and hay and heat.

"Ye all right, lass?" Talon bent over her; his beard prickled her face, and she could feel his words in it, damp and warm.

"Ye've straw in yaer hair!" Eoin said. "Moira'll crack her teeth at that!"

"I cracked my head!" Malon rejoined. "But I'm all right; thank you, Papa!"

Talon clapped her shoulder and said, "It doesn't do tae crack yaer head on a day like this! Eh, Eoin? Think she'll live?"

"She should, if Moira doan see what's become of her hair. It's gone blonde with the straw, lass, knock it out!"

"Crack me teeth at what, pray?"

Moira had emerged from the house and was in the grim stages of locking up, like a jailer shutting up a cell. But her ears were keen and she knew the nuances of her brother's voice. She glowered over one shoulder at the company, and Malon ducked behin Eoin's legs, as she raked straw from her hair.

"Crack yaer teeth, sister?" There was feigned innocence in Eoin's tone. "Buit I haven't said a word!"

Moria snorted, as she pocketed the key and crossed over to the wagon. "Keep yaer secrets; I've neither the mind naer the patience tae hear them. Take the basket, and ye put it in a place where it won' bounce around. And where's that girl, then? Did she get her shoes?"

"I was just about to," Malon called. Moira peered around at her and her eyes widened with outraged disbelief.

"Malon! _What_ have ye done with yaer _hair_? Makin' a fine mess of it, Din's soul; ye look like ye've been lightning struck—"

The excitement of the day had apparently inclined Moira to hysteria. She snatched—for the second time that day—at Malon, but Talon seized her before she could make contact.

"Moira, me love!" He steered her toward the front of the wagon. "The day is young. Save that energy faer the royal beddin', and yell _then_ as loud as ye can!"

He laughed and pinched her thigh as he handed her up into the front seat. Moira turned several shades of purple.

"Beddin'?" Malon tilted her head. "What's the royal beddin'? Do the princess have different blankets fraem us, then?"

"Doan ye worry yaer head about such things as the royal beddin', lass," said Eoin, dryly. "But aye, I imagine the gentlefolk do sleep under blankets far finer 'n' ours. They bein' gentle, they have to. Come on then! Go and fetch yaer shoes." He handed her down.

Conor had materialized by the time Malon returned to the wagon. He was leaning against the wagon's side, arms folded and face turned up to smirk at Eoin; his dogs crowded about him, slapping his legs with their tails. Conor had rolled up the hems of his trousers, and the neck of his shirt was open nearly past decency. The sun did not appear to bother him. Indeed, Conor McKnall might himself have been a shaft of sunlight, filling a mortal body. There was sun in his hair, that turned each lock into smoldering gold. Malon froze, then turned hastily and went around to the other side of the wagon, where she climbed in. Blue Bess, Conor's greyhound, was already sitting on a pile of canvas beside Malon's spot; Malon clambered over her and nestled down in the hay.

"Hot in that?" she heard Conor say. She peeked back over her shoulder; he was still looking at Eoin.

"On a day like this there ain' nothin' faer anyone tae do but _be_ hot in whatever they're wearin'," Eoin retorted. He carefully did not meet Conor's gaze.

Conor turned lazily about and settled against the wagon. He rolled back his head, regarded Eoin upside down. "On a day like _this_?" He breathed a laugh. "There's plenty faer a man to do, as knows how tae use his day right. And he first knows not to squander his day in clothes that don't suit him. Aye! He doan dress like the little princess and her Gerudo king'll be invitin' him tae join them on the dais when they say their vows. Perhaps ye'll be their priest in that, Eoin? Lead them in their swearin', and then bless 'em as they make their way off tae that fine royal bed tae have a night of it?"

Eoin flushed all the way down to the lace-lined collar of his new shirt.

Malon grimaced, full of sympathy if not particular understanding. Cook had wrangled her brother—along with Talon and Ingo—into shirts more splendidly ridiculous than any jester's: Terminian linen that was subtly dyed in Hylian colours—purple, orange, gold, and green, with a thread of chestnut brown to spell out blessings in Hylian calligraphy. Terminian lace frothed at the sleeves, collar, and shirtfront. Cook had excused the excess as necessity, in the light of the royal wedding. "We're none of us tae dress like wretches," she had sniffed, when Talon had remarked, on the day she had presented the shirts to him, Ingo, and Eoin, "'Tis a bit much faer outdoor wearin', Moira, hain't it?"

"It ain' faer outdoor wearin', sair," Cook had continued, with only a trace of deference to soften the indignity in her tone. "Leastways not the outdoor wearin' ye mean. 'Tis faer the weddin'. We mun show pride in our Hylian country, sair. We're proud Hylians and we'll dress like proud Hylians, Hylians who love their royal family, who'll support them in this hard and dangerous time, what with our princess being allied to a _Gerudo_."

"Moira! Ye sound as if we're tae be attendin' a _funeral_."

"Ye'll pardon me, sair, if I do say that our princess marryin' a Gerudo laird should be no cause faer undue cheer."

"Moira," Eoin had said, and grimaced at her over his shirt, "'tis a weddin' sanctioned by the good king hisself. I doan know what is sae _hard_ and _dangerous_ about it, that ye want us tae make such a fuss of _our_ loyalty tae the Hylian state. No one'll be noticin' loyalty much anyhow. Everyone's there tae hauf a good time."

"And _that_ is the trouble!" snapped Cook. "They hauf their good time at the expense of their _country. _Their _dignity_. The dignity of their _king_."

Talon had snorted, "Ah, _Moira_. Doan ye worry that fine head o' yours. The king could marry thirty daughters off tae thirty Gerudo barbarians and our Hylian dignity'd be still safe in yaer hands."

Talon now hauled himself up beside Cook; his own shirt was already darkening with sweat. He turned to grin down at the younger man. "Conor? Ye leave Eoin alone about his lace."

Conor snorted. "Talon. I _mun_ ask him, ye see. That hain't _just_ lace he's got on his throat, 'tis a _princess's_ lace an' a fine froth of it too!"

Talon cast a secret glance in Cook's direction. But Cook did not appear to have heard.

"Well _I'm_ wearin' princess's lace as well, lad," Talon said, plucking at the cuff of a sleeve, apology written on his face. "So leave the puir man be."

"What of yaer lace?" Conor arched an eyebrow. "It doan mean a thing on you, 'cept you need to be harder with that woman there."

"I'll thank ye not tae say a word about me sister," Eoin said, voice sharp.

Conor smirked. "I doan recall wantin' yaer thanks."

"Conor, Conor!" Talon had twisted as far as the bench allowed, and raised a hand. "Calm yaerself, lad, calm yaerself!"

"What's there tae calm?" Conor straightened; the humour had slid from his face, and left a look of irritation. "Doan get heroic with me, Talon; I'll say what I please."

Talon flinched back at the sharpness of Conor's tone. "Oh… well… I doan mean it _hardly_, lad. Jus' a little reminder; doan take it too hard or—"

"And neither do ye need tae start preachin' at me. Turn around."

Talon turned, still making little noises of protest.

"Is Ingo comin', then?" said Cook, turning back to glance at her brother. Her eyes slid sightlessly over Conor.

"I doan know where he's gotten off to," Eoin replied. There was a stiffness in his voice, and he too looked across Conor as if Conor was not there. But he could not manage it as well as Cook; his eyes paused for a moment, and he gave a little start, as if lightning had gone through him.

"Of course we'd be one man short and he'd be the man." Cook rose, and made to descend.

"He'll be along," Talon said, catching her by the elbow.

As if summoned, Ingo appeared from the direction of the bunkhouse, straightening the collar of his shirt, striding in boots that gleamed with a new polishing. A long-limbed boy followed after him, and watched the company with folded arms. Ingo gave his collar a final tug; his expression was little distant, a little troubled. But he summoned up a tight smile for the group, as he said, "We're all ready then?"

"Have _been_ ready!" Talon said, a bit louder than necessary. "How's Liam doing?" Nodding at the boy, who nodded, tersely, back.

"Fine." Ingo clambered into the wagon. "He'll stay on 'til we get back. He knows his duty and the animals well enough."

"Ha!" Talon snorted. "That's why I hired him. Ye can ne'er go wrong with an Ordonian; I'd hire him regular if you didn't—well…" He snorted into his beard, but there was a distinct lack of humour in the sound.

"I'd've sooner stayed behind," said Ingo, quietly.

"It ain' a waste of rupees, hirin' a lad faer the day. He wants wages and we want a holiday. Why ye should want tae miss a holiday, I doan know." Talon caught up the reins and looked back over his shoulder. "Ready, all?" He glanced at Conor, and his voice faltered, almost shy. "Ye ridin' in back, Conor?"

Conor did not glance once at him. He vaulted into the wagon and sat across from Eoin with his legs thrown out before him. Eoin folded himself more tightly into his seat. Blue Bess slid to her feet, and went to sit beside her master. Talon snapped the reins and the wagon jolted forward. The Ordonian boy, Liam, watched them until he vanished from sight around a curve.

There was some uncomfortable quality to this starting out that dashed Malon's excitement for a moment, that made her glance warily about her, at the grim faces. Only Ingo did not seem unduly bothered by the atmosphere; he was deep in his own thoughts, frowning at his cuffs and collar, neither of which he could stop fiddling with. He caught her staring, and gave her a half smile that did not reach his solemn eyes, and she looked quickly over the side of the wagon. She did not much like looking at the steward's face, or returning his smiles. The strain always made her mouth hurt.

--

The kingdom of Hyrule was of two minds when it came to the marriage of the Princess Zelda. Its people expressed either dismay that Hylians and Gerudos should be so allied (for what _ever_ would become of the royal line? What ever would Hyrule do with Gerudo _children_ waiting for the crown?); or delight, born of minds too dull to consider the consequences of a Gerudo-Hylian alliance or too optimistic to consider the dangers. These two states of mind were further divided by "class", for there were no optimistic Hylians among the nobility and no pessimistic Hylians among the commoners. True, there were exceptions: among the nobility, the voice of the king's brother, the Duke Chester, was lifted in shrill support of Lord Ganondorf, and among commoners, the taverns were known to throw from their premises the occasional Poe-drunk Hylian, who moaned too loudly of "corruption" and "hellfire". But no one really counted the Duke as one of the Hylian nobility, for all the Harkinian blood in his veins: he was rarely at court, because he governed the wilds of Ordona, a small, backwoods province no decent Hylian knew existed. The accent that resulted from his residence discredited him. And as for the laments made in the haze of intoxication, those did not count either—everyone knew that Poes possessed those reckless enough to drink too many of them. They made the jolliest men wretched, and spoke through their victim after a certain point had been crossed. It was not the _drunkard_ bemoaning "corruption" and "hellfire", it was a malicious Poe in him complaining before it was digested and forever silenced.

In a word, what was to be an insult to the aristocratic scrupulous of the Hylian populace had become a public festival to the common careless. Big events, whatever their cause, were a reason to celebrate. And even if Hylian festivals had not the renown and notoriety of other celebrations—such as those held in Termina at the blue moon; those were known for running out of control even before they had begun—they were certainly "occasions" in their own regard.

And from the Hylian Field, it was clear just how great this "occasion" was to be. The morning had only just dawned, and already the festival had outgrown both the day and the wedding.

They saw first the white streamers that decorated the walls of Market Town as if the Market were a bride. Pennants had been hung from the great, open mouth of the drawbridge, and they hung down so far that their ends vanished into the moat. Upon the field itself, stretched out half a mile from the drawbridge, were the tents: countless dots flung out along the plain, drawn in countless colours against the dust-dry rhythm of the grass that belled out with wind. A roar of sound echoed like the grumble of the ocean, the closer they drew. And like ghosts, the figures of people began to flicker in and out among the chaos and grow steadily more solid.

Malon's unhappiness melted from her at first sight of the pennants and streamers. She leapt to her feet—startling Blue Bess, who looked around at her—as the wagon jolted along the road, and screamed with delight as she nearly went flying.

"Sweet _Din_!" both Eoin and Cook bellowed. But Malon grabbed hold of her papa before she could tumble over the side, and she grinned so widely at Cook's rage that her dry underlip split a little.

"Oh _look_ at all the tents, Cook!" she cried. "Look at everyone—there's so many _people_! Look!"

"We're lookin', lass, we're lookin'!" said Talon. He laughed and reached to pat the little arm slung across his shoulders. "But ye'll give Cook here the apoplexy if ye stand up! Get yaerself a better lookin' post, and brace yaerself!"

Eoin crawled obligingly to the front of the wagon to hold Malon about the waist, as she tripped to a spot between Cook and Talon and clung to their shoulders, staring before her.

The marvel swelling in her stomach was too wonderful to contain. "Just _look_ at it!" she shouted. "D'ye see? There's a coach, an' it's got white horses! Wherever'd they get white horses, Papa, we doan hauf any—ooh, Papa, look! See that big orange tent? I saw someone come out as ain't Hylian! Ooooh, Papa! It's a _Goron_! Look, Papa, three of 'em! Gorons!"

She began to jump up and down as far as the wagon and Eoin's arms would allow, and Cook said loudly, "Ye'll break my shoulder, chit; stop bein' a crazy fool and sit _down_!"

But Malon could not sit down. Those were the massive, boulder-like figures of _Gorons_ walking among the Hylian folk, and there were great blue tents that she felt sure were the tents of the fish-people in Lake Hylia, the Zoras. Princess Zelda was the princess of all of these people, Hylian and Goron and Zora alike, and they had all come to see her married, to show her their love. Malon's fluttering heart filled her chest and stomach, and she stretched to her tip-toes, aching to be free of the wagon, aching to run and dance and _fly_.

"What did ye say?" Eoin said loudly, in her ear. She looked around in sudden confusion; he was looking at Ingo.

"I said—" Ingo's voice was low and hoarse with diffidence, though he was obviously straining it. "I was sayin' tae the lass, it'll be a festival, hey?" He gestured at her, and looked into her face, and she could not look away fast enough. "They've the best ices here. Shaved, with berry syrup. I know a place; I—we can buy ye one—"

"Here?" Talon bellowed suddenly. "Shall we make camp here?"

They were drawing level with the crowd. They had passed through the ranks of the stragglers and entered into the rabble; people were skirting their wagon, children swinging around clutching sweetmeats, ices, toys that swung jerkily from strings. The pungency of cooking pork sweetened the air, and there were spices, breads. There were smells Malon could not name, could not place. She opened her mouth to breathe it all in.

"Back a bit," Cook shouted; she gestured behind them. "Not sae close in; we'll be trampled—"

"I say closer in!" Conor spoke suddenly, and his shadow loomed across them. Talon glanced up at him, his face crumpled with squinting; he said, "Closer—?"

"Everythin' worthwhile that's goin' on is closer in," Conor said.

"An' ye'll walk to it," Cook snapped. "Sair, ye mun pull the horses back. We canna be this far in." Conor looked at her, an eyebrow raised.

"Outskirts might be better," Talon called. He had thrown his concentration into pulling back the carthorses, in an attempt to turn them around. "A bit more breathin' room farther back."

"_Aye_," said Conor. "What the housemarm says goes. No need faer the word of the _master_ when his housemarm can nag, eh?"

His sarcasm was lost to all but a few ears. Eoin had leapt down and had gone around to the horses; he was guiding them into the cleared patch of grass. Talon hands were full of reins. But beside Malon, Cook stiffened. A rush of anger broke through Malon's stomach like a flood; she did not understand why Conor could not be quiet and happy, why he must complain.

Between Eoin, Talon, and Ingo—who had descended and helped Eoin—the horses were turned around and guided to a comfortable campsite. The company alighted, picketed the horses, and unpacked the wagon. Blue Bess slid off into the crowd, after Conor, Malon supposed; she had lost sight of him, but se was not bothered, but rather relieved. Cook and Ingo began to set up camp. The tedium of the chore looked simply unspeakable, and Malon found that her feet had a will of their own. They drew her toward the edge of the campsite, toward the Market Town where it seemed the whole of Hyrule teemed, and her enchantment was such that even Cook's withering glares could not unsettle her.

"Ye stay here or ye'll be _trampled_!" Cook bawled out for the third or fourth time, grabbing Malon by the dress and hauling her back.

"Can't we go in? I doan want tae set up tents!"

"First things first. Fetch the blankets fraem the wagon and get 'em put in their tents; there's two faer ours and four faer the master's tent and _Eoin_?" She turned in search of her brother, and in that moment of distraction, Malon caught sight of her father's shoulders in their orange and purple linen, his broad back in overalls, sidling off into the crowd toward the Market. She gave a squeak of excitement. If _Papa_ was not bothering with tents, then surely there was no reason for _her_ to do so. She said, "Good-bye, Cook!" and dashed off after Talon before Cook could answer her disobedience with anything more than a, "Malon—!"

She caught up with her father in good time, and seized his hand, even as she shouted, "I'm coming too, wait for me, I'm coming too!"

"Malon!" Talon's voice was startled, the look he turned on her even more so. "Oh, lass, I didn't see ye there."

"Can't we wait faer Eoin?" She had thought that they would all go into the Market Town together, but since Cook was so intent upon tents, she supposed they must leave her behind—but surely Eoin would join them. She told her father as much.

Talon looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Was anyone else comin' with ye, then?"

Malon shrugged. "I doan think so. But can't we—"

"Talon?" A voice cut through the crowd from somewhere up ahead, and was followed, a moment later, by the figure of Conor. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth pinched up with exasperation. "What in hell are ye lingerin' all the way back here faer—" He reached out and clipped her father on the shoulder as if Talon were a lagging carthorse, and came too close to do so, so stiflingly close that Malon pulled back to avoid being stepped on. He noticed her then, and his face grew tight, his body stiff. Blue Bess came trailing up beside him, a whisper of blue movement.

"Perhaps—perhaps we'll go another time," said Talon. Malon could not tell if he directed his words at her or at Conor. He was staring at a distant spot of ground.

"Make him go away!" Malon pleaded, tugging on her father's hand. She did not think twice about Conor hearing her; suddenly, she did not care what she said or what he heard, if only he and his always stealing her Papa away would disappear, like skull children before the morning sun.

Talon's eyes flickered to her. He looked on the verge of speech—of apology. Malon's stomach sank.

"You brought the housemarm tae some purpose, didn't ye?" Conor's voice was thick with disgust. "The kid's her responsibility; why d'ye pay her?"

"Conor—"

"You leave Papa alone!" Malon tightened her grip on her father's hand. She had a sudden, terrible vision—Papa vanishing like a skull child at dawn if she did not hold his hand tightly enough, and Conor smiling his shuttered, golden smile as he followed her Papa down, down into the shadows beneath the earth where only monsters and the Hylians they stole could go.

Conor looked at her, and the look in his eyes was answer enough: cold as a night in winter, sharp a hunting knife newly honed.

"Talon?" A new voice, coming from behind. It was like water, after a long, terrible thirst, and Malon turned toward it, so grateful that she suddenly couldn't breathe. Had Eoin come? Cook? She welcome even Cook, only someone to save her and Papa from—

Ingo came striding from the tents, and Malon's heart faltered.

"We missed ye and the lass," Ingo continued. His eyes flicked between Malon, Talon, Conor. "The tents are all set up, and we're all ready tae go tae Market."

Talon coughed, too ostentatiously for the cough to be genuine. "I—I'd meant tae leave the lass with you. You and Cook and Eoin. Ye all take her around and—I would've joined ye all soon as I could, soon as I—" He glanced at Conor. Conor had gone very still.

"No," said Ingo. "No. Ye'll come along with us. Faer the lass." He smiled sideways at Malon. Her bewilderment was too great to allow her any expression in return.

"The _hell_—ye doan order him around like he's yaer boy tae do so!" Conor snapped. "Talon—"

"Conor," said Ingo, in a voice almost too quiet to hear above the crowd—but they all heard it, anyway. "He isn't yaer boy tae tempt around, either."

Talon's hand grew loose in Malon's, like a blanket limp with heat and humidity. She looked up at him, a little frightened, utterly lost. Her father's face was gray, his lips sagging, as if he had been just hit around the face, and hung between the shock of it, and recovery.

Conor spat in Ingo's face, but the steward had anticipated him. The spittle splattered across Ingo's shirt.

"Well, then." Conor turned his simmering ferocity on Talon. "Whose _boy_ are ye tae be, then?"

Talon did not answer, or even blink, as if he were a sculpture, and no life had ever animated the gray mask of his face. Malon felt sick.

"_Go away!_" she shouted. "_Go away_!"

A spasm rippled through Conor's hand; he half raised it. She cringed back, and heard Ingo's voice from somewhere distant, "Touch her an' I'll break yaer arm, Conor McKnall."

Conor spat again and caught Malon in the face. She choked with shock and dragged her sleeve over the trail sliding toward her mouth. She heard Ingo move, saw Conor move, and then the tears in her eyes made everything blurry. Something blue slipped away into the crowd; a piece of her mind thought, _Bess!_ and it was with an keen unhappiness that Malon watched the dog melt away after _him_—Conor—hideous beauty made mortal, made of sunshine.

Eoin and Cook found her sobbing a little while later, still clinging to her father's slack hand, as the crowd swirled and danced around them in the white sunlight, like a bride on her wedding day.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Like OMG, like _update_, like _woah_. This surpasses my own expectations for myself, but hey, new year and new resolutions and all that jazz. I've sworn to finish this story come hell or high water.

This chapter had reached 21 pages before I realized that it might be wiser to stop writing, and start making sense of what I had, xD This was supposed to be the first of two chapters that would concluded Part I, but it is now the first of four: extended with the hope that I would neither overwhelm myself nor readers with updates that run on for thirty pages.

I'm hoping to have another update before school begins later this month. Until then, I will be editing the first six chapters of this fic—as after a solid, two year hiatus, I've read back through themand realized that my writing style and my idea for this story have both seen dramatic changes since 2006. I'll post updates on this site, but plan first to post them on my deviantArt page which, if you are so inclined, you can find a link to in my profile. I'm also hoping to create an audio version of _Moonstruck_ in the future. That will be fun, :]

Anyway, tl;dr version of the above: yay, dead story lives, thank you lots and lots for reading, and if you can, leave a review. =D

Selah


	9. Princess and the Wizard

**A/N: **A quick note: this chapter expands, in part, upon a brief scene at the end of chapter four between Ganondorf and the Great Faery. That was a rather obscure scene, now that I think about it.

**ooo**

**Chapter 9: Princess and Wizard**

The princess wore blue, like the goddess Nayru, before whose altar she knelt the morning she was to be married.

She had escaped the attentions of her ladies in waiting at dawn—a maneuver that would have proved impossible without Impa's help. Zelda had whispered to her nursemaid, "I wish a moment in the temple, to pray," and Impa had replied, "Of course."

The usual road to temple, that cut through the heart of Market Town, had been rendered impassable, now that half of Hyrule, come to celebrate the princess's wedding, thronged it. But Impa was Sheikah; stealth and secrecy were her art. She knew paths long forgotten, and escorted Zelda down one whose single virtue was that it skirted the town. The trail was a suggestion along the forested ground, so cramped that Zelda was forced to stumble along in Impa's wake. Woody vines wove the trees together like a tattered blanket; bushes tangled in Zelda's skirt. She could make out nothing of the path for herself.

They reached the temple just as the deep, dawn blue of the sky was starting to fade. The path had led them to the rear garden, where none disturbed the silence. Impa left Zelda there, and the princess hastened, meanwhile, into the Temple of Time, clutching her cloak about her body as if it would conceal her from the world.

She entered by a side entrance, and glimpsed the main chamber around a cluster of pillars. There were people scattered throughout the room: factotums robed in green, sages in shades of brown, orange, and red. The silence was a living thing, like a worshipper bent in tearful prayer.

She stood for a moment looking at the end of the room, where the altar of the Sacred Stones stood. She knew the altar as well as she knew her own face in a mirror: a block of granite whose lowest tier came level with her chin, into whose surface had been cut three bowls shaped to fit the three Sacred Stones of the goddesses. Farore's Green, Din's Red, Nayru's Blue: so the people called them, though in the scrolls, scholars called them the Kokiri's Emerald, the Goron's Ruby, and the Zora's Sapphire, in honour of the people charged with their protection. But without the Ocarina of the Royal Family, and a song to awaken the magic inside of them, the stones were useless.

The Ocarina was in her pocket, pushed so deep that it thumped against her leg with every step she took. The feel of it made her shudder.

She took a final look down the room, beyond the Sacred Stones to the dais that rose up behind the altar. From this distance, the dais wall looked just like that—a wall. But she knew better. She had read the scrolls, and scrutinized the drawings that showed that wall thrown open, to reveal a darkness in which an object gleamed by the power of its own light.

A door, a sword, and beyond them both, the Sacred Realm. And there? There lay the Triforce. The goddesses' last gift to mortals.

The vastness of what she was about to do fell upon her then.

No one could remember when the Sacred Realm had last been opened—if it had ever been. People had tried to open it, once upon a time; they had murdered men, raised demons, sold their souls for magic, all for the chance of passing through that door. But the goddesses had given the task of protecting the Sacred Realm to the Hylian Royal Family, and Zelda's ancestors had done their duty.

And now the Hylian Princess herself meant to breach the door, and enter the Realm. Was there virtue enough in her to justify what she meant to do?

For this was crime.

She felt suddenly sick, and turning, ran for a corridor. The Ocarina bounced against her leg all the way.

Zelda found an unoccupied room far along the corridor—a chapel, with pews lining the aisles, all facing the altar. She stood in the doorway and stared toward the front. There was a statue of a woman lifted where all could see her: Nayru, goddess of law, draped in blue, unfolding the sacred scrolls upon which commandments were written. Zelda made her way along the wall toward her.

She knelt on the steps, clumsy in her dress and cloak. Hylian royalty did not usually kneel before the Three, but rather bent their heads during the services. But Zelda felt, in that moment, that simply bowing could not be enough; her body was leaden with a confusion that she could not name. This heavy, bewildering feeling had filled her earlier, while the castle yet slept; it had come in a dream of herself standing before the Sacred Stones, with the Ocarina in her shaking hands.

The doors behind her had sighed, and she had turned, saw the boy from the forest walking through them and toward her, with a ruby, a sapphire, and an emerald in his hands. He drew close, and her body began to convulse with shaking. She suddenly could not bear the sight of him; she wanted him _gone_, for he frightened her. She opened her mouth to say, "You will come no closer." But before she could speak, he had begun to change.

He began to grow tall and broad, and his green tunic darkened into ink. Armour encased him limbs; his skin became a gold and bronze darkness, touched with glassy green, and his eyes were a handful of flame. He looked at her, forest boy no longer but desert king. He opened his gauntleted hands and the three stones fell from them. His hair was scarlet, and across his brow trailed a circlet of gold.

A voice whispered, "Ganondorf Dragmire. Mandrag. Second son of the Dragmire line. Tell me the truth that men have forgotten." She realized the voice was her own, even as the Ocarina fell from her hands, and she went to him.

She grew taller with each step she took, and began to change as the forest boy had changed, so that when she reached Ganondorf, she was a little girl no longer, but a woman. Her head reached the underside of his jaw and she felt stretched and awkward in a body she no longer knew.

He took her hand, and drew her toward him, kissing her fingers and her palm and the inside of her wrist. She shuddered. His mouth was warm. He laid a hand against the small of her back and pulled her against him. His voice and lips teased her ear; she whimpered and he said, laughing, "Men have forgotten what it means to be pure of heart, pure of intention. Is _that_ is the truth you are seeking, princess? That men have forgotten, and censure what they do not understand? But I have not forgotten." He paused, and she felt his smile curve up against her earlobe. "You took something from me," he whispered. "And I have come to take it back."

She did not understand him, but understanding hardly mattered. He bent his head and ran his mouth down her the side of her neck. The shock off his touch burned through her like fire, and Zelda's mind went blank. When she awoke, she was crying, and she wasn't very sure why she was.

She knelt now before the altar of Nayru, cradling herself, crying again, though she had not meant to, though she had come here only to pray. She tried to speak intelligibly, but her words were blubbering, a whispered litany of, "_Help me help me help me_," until her tears smothered her words.

The images from her dream loomed now in her mind's eye: the Sacred Stones, the Door behind them. _Open the Door_, her dreams had whispered to her, _open the Door and take the Triforce before the wizard king. Hide it from him. Shatter it. Do what you must, only _do not let him get it_._

"M-must not," she sobbed, "m-must not—"

The images behind her eyelids played on: she watched the boy walking toward her, the jewels in his hands, and her dismay was like a tidal wave:_ too late, too late, too late to correct what you have done, too late to stop him. Too late, too late. Stop stop _stop.

"Men have forgotten what it means to be pure of heart, pure of intention." The dream Ganondorf's voice echoed in the silence of Nayru's chapel. _Forgotten, forgotten, pure of heart, pure of intention._ "I have only come in search of peace, princess," he had told her, once, in the garden, at night. "I come only in search of peace, and the treaties that will ensure it."

Did she misjudge him? Or did she misjudge herself?

She sobbed, "_Help me_," until the words blurred in her mouth, and she could speak no more.

**ooo**

Lord Ganondorf Dragmire found the child who was to be his bride praying in the chapel.

He watched her, curled before the altar, her small, golden head bent nearly to the ground, her eyes squeezed shut and her teeth gritted. Her hands were clasped, tightly, as if she held between them some terrible thing that it terrified her to release. No peaceful, maidenly prayer gripped this child, he thought, wryly. He stepped closer, careful to make no noise. He saw she was shaking.

He tilted his head, listened to her muffled gasping. She was pale. And _small_, smaller than she had ever seemed. He cocked an eyebrow, curious despite himself. She looked deflated, somehow. As though a piece of her had gone missing.

Some inner power had filled her, like sunlight, when he had last seen her, he mused, a vague aura that smouldered whenever he had looked at her directly. Few people wore their auras so visibly—his grandmother, Koume, had told him that, and he had not believed her, not until recently—not until a faery's blessing had allowed him to see the truth of his grandmother's claim. The inner power that had filled the princess was like the halo of light Hylian artists surrounded paintings of their goddesses in, and the resemblance made him wonder, for a moment, if perhaps the Princess of Hyrule were something holy.

But it had not been holiness, he mused, neither that nor virtue nor righteousness. She was not a righteous child, this Princess Zelda, even if righteous fury drove her. There was a shadow knotted inside of her, so deep and dark and complete that light could not touch it. She gleamed like sunlight, as a mask gleams with colour, but he had seen beneath that mask: there was no face, no innocence, no _child_.

There was only cold, icy, hideous hatred. A hatred all for _him_.

He had seen it the day of the fete, when he caught her skulking in the garden and eavesdropping on him and the Duke. But he had not _marked_ the shadowy hatred, for then she was only a girl, a child, a _Hylian_, mired in her prejudices, swamped by her fears. She had accused him in a voice as shrill as a lunatic's; he had supposed her silly and deranged by nerves, even if her accusations spoke of a wisdom—or simply blind _luck_—that gave him pause, and made him smile, despite himself. She was a quick girl, if she invented from his fame as a _scholar_, and his person as _Gerudo_, a motive for this marriage that had nothing to do with peace between her Hylian people and his Gerudo one. Or else she was only stupid and flustered and oddly lucky. He did not care, either way.

She was only a child. A girl. A _Hylian_.

He might have marked the shadow knotted in her had she not been these things. But he saw it now, now that it was gone. Now that she really _was_ just a child, kneeling before an altar, trembling.

"Pity," he whispered, and he took a step closer to the tiny figure bent over the marble. "And I had come all this way hoping for something more."

The Princess Zelda froze.

**ooo**

The Great Faery's had visited Ganondorf as he and his entourage had passed a night beneath the stars, a day's ride from the capital of the Hylians, and the Hylian Princess Ganondorf was to marry.

She had come into his tent, tall and plump and pale as moonlight, draped in a cloak the colour of a starlit sea, with vines entwined in the rose-pink braid that fell to the back of her knees. None among his Gerudo had seen her, and Ganondorf himself had not, not at first—he had only caught her flickering shadow on the water of his washbowl, and felt her hand on his shoulder, her breath in his ear. He knew her, at first, as only a voice.

The voice had said, "Can a man such as you really love a girl such as _that_?"

The water had rippled, as if fingers had stroked it. A child's face had appeared on the waves. The likeness of the Princess Zelda was pale and blurred; the only feature that stood out was her eyes, ice blue and crystal sharp on the ripples. She was scowling, her eyes cold and sullen, and as the water lapped, her face began to change, to darken, until her features were blotted out entirely, and above her slender neck there was nothing but a gaping darkness, a hole in space that swallowed the light.

"She hates you," said the voice. "She dreams of you shattering this world like glass beneath her little doll's feet, and she hates you because she is so frightened."

The corner of Ganondorf's mouth had quirked in a humourless smile. "What is there to fear? I will merely be consort, when she is made queen."

"She does not think in consorts, or who is king, who is queen." The voice was drily idle. "Do you wish simply to be her consort?"

"It is better than to be her vassal." Ganondorf was slowly turning his head, looking for the voice's body in the shadows.

"Vassal is better than consort." The voice now sounded amused. "And king is better than all of them."

Morgaine had revealed herself to him, then. She had stepped forward and the radiance of her form was her own light. Ganondorf gazed at her.

She had laughed, softly. "You are not humbled?"

"No," he said.

"Do you know what I am?"

"Yes." He paused, and gave her body a single, sweeping glance, dismissive; her face grew pink, and she smiled, dropped her eyes. "I did not know the Great Faeries could walk among men."

She looked at him from beneath her lashes. "It is our right, to walk the domain that the goddesses have left to us. But there is rarely reason to bother. We only awaken to answer prayers that move us—or to look upon great men walking by."

"Have I so enraptured you?" He turned, with lazy grace, back to his washbowl.

"Come with me." She paused. "I could give you the world."

"When I desire the world, I shall take it, faery."

"And what if it is within your grasp, right now? It is there, in the Hylian capital, the means of taking the world, here and now." She stepped closer. "I can give it to you. _Will_ give it to you."

He gazed back at her, frail as summer mist in her starlit cloak. "But what if I already have the means of seizing this land?" he said. "What becomes then of your offer?"

"You don't have the means," she retorted. "You have only the pieces—whispers, legends out of books. But _I_—_I _was there when the goddesses sealed the Sacred Realm. I know how it was shut, and how it shall be opened."

He stepped away from her, turned his back upon her words. She followed him with quick steps, her words growing breathless. "You could not open the Door in the Temple of Time, not if you had every piece of the sacred key," she whispered. "The three stones, the Ocarina—they are not enough. Only a _Hylian_ can open the Door. Why do you think so many failed, before now? Every wizard—every _interloper_—who fought and failed and died before the Sacred Door? Their spirits banished into the twilight, and imprisoned in a mirror?"

"Some were Hylian," said Ganondorf, quietly.

"But none had the second sight." The faery had paused; she now came a step nearer, and he felt the warmth of her closeness against his back, the drift of her hair and cloak and vines against his arm. Her voice grew low. "Your princess does not think of consorts or kings or queens, Lord Dragmire. But she dreams of the goddesses. The goddesses whisper to her in her sleep. She has the second sight. She can open the Sacred Door."

Ganondorf turned to look at her.

"But as you have said," he began, slowly, "The princess of Hyrule has no love for me. Whether she has the second sight or not, and whether she can open the Door to the Sacred Realm, avails me not."

"Do you require her love," the faery breathed, "when you have mine?"

**ooo**

"_You_," Princess Zelda gasped.

Ganondorf sank down upon a pew, and met her horror-struck gaze with a crooked smile. "Yes," he said. "Me."

She rose, and stood shrinking before him, as though she were a supplicant, and he her lord. Her trembling had increased, but he saw she was suddenly aware of it, manfully trying to stifle it. She could not tear her gaze away from him.

Ganondorf leaned forward and stared hard into her eyes. He wanted to look into her, to find the truth of his conjectures. Did that shadow still exist? The shadow the faery had shown him in his washbowl? The one that had prompted her to spit her accusations in the garden, to follow his movements with glowers in the Great Hall? Did he see truth? Or mere wishes?

"What does a princess have to pray for, that she would dig welts into her skin, and huddle like a beaten dog before an altar?" Ganondorf whispered.

She flinched, and flexed her fingers; only now, Ganondorf realized they had been curled into fists. There was a flicker of pain, of shame, in her face.

She said, "What does a wizard gain by interrupting a princess in her prayers?"

Ganondorf eased back against the pew. He thought he had seen it—the briefest flicker of disdain in that pale, drawn face; thought he heard it, though her words trembled. A spark of disappointment lanced through him. Was the shadow he sought, he wondered, wearily, only childish, girlish, Hylian defiance? "Do you think me a wizard, princess?" he asked.

She drew in a deep breath. "I know you are a wizard."

"And does a wizard deserve your hatred?"

She shuddered. "He deserves that and more, if his inten—if _he_ is evil."

Why did she falter? And watch him with such searching confusion, as if she were bewildered?

He leaned forward again. "Tell me of these evil intentions that deserve such blame."

A look of potent misery passed over her face. "Aren't you a scholar?" Her voice was small, and the question a genuine question, rather than the disdainful statement she had no doubt intended it to be. "Don't you know?"

"Does it matter?" He watched her eyes, how they flickered, dizzyingly, side to side. "You are the one making accusations, child."

She stared at him, with those roving eyes he had once watched burn like blue flame in the water of a washbowl. He reached out, and touched her face.

And for a moment, she let him.

**ooo**

The faery said to him, when they had known each other but two days, "Tell me of yourself, Ganondorf. I want to know what you are."

She had been standing before a mirror as she made her request, but she had turned from it to look at him. His thoughts had been idle, as they always were beneath her fountain, and her voice seemed come from a far place. He saw her movement as a shimmer against the glass, as though he looked upon a woman underwater. Her hair swirled about her naked shoulders; the vines she wore drifted. He ignored the glance she fixed on him; he watched her in the glass of her mirror. The glass was full of undulations, and it made him think of wind in water, urging the sea against the sand. Her body had stilled, but in the mirror, she continued to move. Her hair, her vines, were dancing.

"What shall I tell you," he said, "that you do not already know?"

She laughed. Her head bent back and exposed a throat long and slender; her profile was finely moulded, perfect as a statue's. The vigour of her merriment enlivened her beauty; she glowed with it, as though her laughter were a tangible thing, that filled her like sunlight in glass.

He watched her and was unmoved.

The Great Faery Morgaine had long ceased to stir Ganondorf Dragmire, whatever she did, however she laughed. He had taught himself—at her command and at the command of his own person—to remember his pride, to remember his purpose. "Take this lesson to the kingdom above my fountain," she had once told him. "When you walk its lawns and eat its foods and speak beneath its burning sun and sleep beneath its paling moon, remember yourself, Gerudo. Remember yourself."

He had understood her. She was speaking no new truth. He remembered himself, in the world above the faery's fountain, and he remembered himself beneath it. He was not a man to be distressed by Hylian delusions of superiority, or to be excited by the laughing seductions of a faery. He was not a man to go to seed.

Morgaine shook her hair now, and smiled down at him. "You wound me," she said, and her smile was teasing. "Shall we speak of nothing—share nothing? Pretend we know all there is to know? That is a dangerous thing, my king."

"It a useless thing to dwell on what is already obvious."

Her expression grew serious. "But perhaps what is obvious to yourself is not obvious to me. Perhaps you give me greater due than I deserve."

He considered her. He had no love for her humble display. Her voice was honesty, but her glance was not. Her eyes were full of knowledge. The Great Faery was one of the goddesses' own, left on earth when those heavenly mothers had ascended. Mankind was her duty. She accepted his prayers, his toils, his pains; she protected him and gathered him into her arms when he was dead. The goddesses had created the world, and then they had gone. This faery and her sisters—and the goddesses final gift to mankind—these were the only things left of Them on earth. No, this faery was not stupid. Her mind was full of goddesses' knowledge.

And she had chosen to share it with him.

The faery stepped away from her mirror, and came timidly near him. He lolled against the divan, met her pale eyes. "You know exactly who I am," he murmured. "What I am, _why_ I am. And what I mean to do. Else… you would not have asked me here." He let his words sink in. "You know this."

"But I would have you tell me." Her voice was a whisper; she knelt at his couch, and folded her hands upon his knee. "Tell me of yourself."

"What is there to tell?" He sat up, suddenly, tearing away from her hands. She startled, eyes wide; he thought of a doe, caught in the moment between death and escape, gazing down the terrible length of the hunter's crossbow. He grasped her beneath the chin, and turned her face, that he might stare into her eyes. "I am Lord Ganondorf Dragmire, who men call the Mandrag, King of Thieves—_yes_, and I mean to remind the kingdom above your fountain of this. They have forgotten. I shall remind them. I am the first son to be born of the Dragmire House, since our last prince died a hundred years ago; I am the voice of a people struck voiceless by their own gods. I am all these things, and I will remind the world of them."

The faery shuddered, and he realized his grip was too tight upon her throat. But he did not release her just then, but sat gazing down at her. Her lips parted, and her eyes were wide, their glance milky. He opened his hand, and touched her cheek; he murmured to her, "Do you understand?"

"I _do_," she breathed.

She rose, quick and sudden, as though kindled with new purpose. "_That_ is what you must tell me," she said. "Tell me what the kingdom above my fountain has forgotten."

He stared at her, and she at him, and very slowly she stepped toward him, so that she stood pressed against his legs. She spoke again. "Ganondorf Dragmire. Mandrag. Second son of the Dragmire line. Tell me the truth that men have forgotten."

"Yes," he said, after a moment. "I will."

**ooo**

"They say that once, a hundred thousand years ago, the Gerudo and the Hylians were one and the same people," Lord Ganondorf Dragmire began, with the warmth of his fingers still pressed to Zelda's face.

Zelda trembled. She had not meant to, and she tried to suppress each tremor as it came rolling up her spine. But the effort was useless. The touch of the Gerudo king was as warm in life as it had been in her dream. She could not recall her dream with any composure. She shut her eyes, and allowed her trembling to course through her.

"They dwelt in a Hyrule that was as perfect as the Sacred Realm," Ganondorf continued. "And there they were at every moment caressed and comforted by a cool and gentle wind. They say that wind was the breathing of the goddesses, to remind their people that they were never forgotten by their Makers.

"But there was no life in that perfect land. The people were hollowed out by their pale, formless existence, and their hearts sat frozen in their chests. Some women among that race began to hunger for something to fill up their hollow bodies and make their frozen hearts beat. They began to search for something more. They did not know what to call that something, or where to find it, and in their ignorance, they grew desperate.

"But those who were resigned to their peace could not understand why these women could not be likewise resigned. 'You spit upon the goddesses with your greed and discontent!' they cried. But the women ignored them, and searched the harder. These others grew terrified, and they fled.

"But wherever these cowards fled, a great wind danced up around them and soothed their fatigue. This wind was a life-giving breath: it coaxed the full bounty that the world has to offer from the earth's womb. The grass grew thicker and more lush beneath their fleeing footsteps; waters as pure and cold as ice-melt bubbled up behind them. The goddesses gifted them with plenty, and continued to breathe upon them expressions of love and devotion. The goddesses called them faithful.

"But where the discontent women walked? Tell me, princess. What do you think became of that land through which the discontent women walked?"

He rose, and the energy with which he stood buffeted her. His hand was still against her cheek, but he forced her head around suddenly. Her eyes flew open. She found herself facing the altar.

"Do you know the story, princess? Is it something they tell you, when you kneel to prayers? How the goddesses damned the discontent for their desperation and their hunger, caused deserts to spring beneath their footsteps, took from them that life-bearing wind?" He stooped, and his voice was abruptly beside her ear. "Do your priests ever say what the goddesses called those women? That They called them the unfaithful?"

"It isn't _true_," she whispered. "Hylians and Gerudos—they were _never_ one people."

"Can you know this, princess?" His words were a breath. "Can you, Zelda, be certain of _anything_?"

_Stop stop _stop, she had sobbed at a boy in green, as he had walked through her dreams, jewels in his hands, his eyes empty of everything but his duty. _Stop stop stop; I must correct what I have done!_

She was dimly aware that Ganondorf straightened and stepped away from her.

She stood frozen, staring at the altar, at the figure of Nayru, who presided from the stone, and she thought of the sacred jewels, the sacred door, the ocarina in her pocket. _None had ever opened the Sacred Realm before. For surely that was a crime._

Ganondorf spoke.

"In the end," he said, "the women cried to the goddesses who had damned them, 'What have we done, that you take from us your blessing?'

"But the goddesses did not answer them; They turned Their faces away. The women raged at this silence, and they turned their faces from the goddesses. And in that moment, they began to shrivel up, in the heat and stifling air of that desert to which they were abandoned.

"They say that is how the Gerudo came to be separate from the Hylians, and how the Gerudo came to live in a desert, where nothing but the hottest winds blow, stirring up the sand, so that it strips the skin from the bone. Perhaps it is true."

He paused, and the chapel was filled with a heavy silence.

"Certainly, here," he finished, "in the Hylian lands… the wind is different."

When Zelda turned, she found him walking down the chapel aisle, toward the door. He did not once look back at her.


End file.
